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Besides tying up pools and filling them with cold water, have competitive swim teams held swimming back from becoming a more popular sport?

In many ways it is natural for a swim team to want primary access to a pool for their practices. This includes prime time swimming and a water temperature that the team wants.

In many ways it also not in the coaches interest to hold back the information that they use to train their athletes. If they are already successful coaches, providing information on how they train their swimmers is giving away their competitive advantage.

Change in swimming is not likely to come from organized swimming or the status quo.

Real change in making swimming a more popular sport, a more public sport, may come from independent coaches from outside of organized teams.

If we continue to count on established coaches to provide the pools and the coaching that the public could use, then we may be waiting a long time. Swimming is more likely to grow with independent coaches making their training methods available to the public using the open water and private gyms like an LA Fitness to grow the number of adults swimmers in this country.