2018 Best Leader of the Year Finalist: Coach Ski
We are pleased to introduce you to one of our top finalists, Coach Robert “Ski” Miecznikowski. Congratulations, Coach Ski!
BAND’s Best Leader of the Year Award is an esteemed honor for leaders with an extraordinary ability to band people together around a shared vision.
We are pleased to introduce you to one of our top finalists, Coach Robert “Ski” Miecznikowski.
Robert “Ski” Miecznikowski coaches men’s and women’s competitive swimming at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. A competitive swimmer growing up, Coach Ski competed in Division 1 swimming and water polo at the University of North Carolina and worked as a coaching assistant during grad school at the University of Iowa.
He was inspired to move into coaching because of his parents and coaching growing up. His family instilled in him a strong sense of giving back to others: his dad fought in Vietnam as a Marine pilot, and his mother was a teacher. He also faced a number of injuries in his swimming career, but his coaches were very encouraging and pushed him to do well.
After he graduated college, Coach Ski started working as an Independent Sales Rep for a number of years to support his family, but when he was offered the opportunity to purchase his own company, he turned it down and moved back into coaching full time.
Before he started at St. Ambrose, Coach Ski spent many years coaching club and high school swimming at Iowa City and his teams brought home numerous trophies. He felt that he had done all he could at the high school level, so was excited to move back into college coaching.
St. Ambrose is a bit similar to a Division 2 school in that they offer athletic scholarships, but instead of offering a full ride scholarship to top swimmers, the team splits up the scholarships so that everyone on the team has some support. They mostly compete in the NAIA Conference but occasionally swim against teams from the NCAA Conference as well.
Coach Ski makes sure that every swimmer puts their academics first, and worries about practice second. When he speaks with his recruits, he emphasizes that the team has the highest cumulative GPA for athletic teams in the nation.
“My first job here is to make sure you graduate in four years, with a degree you want, and hopefully with a 3.0 GPA, so you can go into grad school if they want. If you can achieve that, everything else will fall into place.” — Coach Ski
Every day, Coach Ski wakes up early to drive the hour trip to campus for swim practice in the morning. He inspires the team with a positive attitude and rallying speech every morning to get them going for the day and gives them goals to strive for.
“I focus a lot on the psychology of swimming,” says Coach Ski, “This sport is mental. The biggest thing that holds the swimmers back is between their ears: they hold themselves back.”
Swimming helps give everyone on the team a structured activity to help emphasize the importance of having a balanced lifestyle. Any time that they aren’t in the pool practicing, athletes need to be studying and working on homework to achieve success in school.
“I really work at breaking that wall down and getting them to think differently about the sport and about the role it plays in their life. Swimming is something we do, not who we are.” — Coach Ski
Every year, St. Ambrose holds community events such as “Be the Difference” Day, where groups on campus volunteer to give back to their local community by helping out with elderly care, raking leaves, and doing clean-up.
Coach Ski inspired every swimmer on the team to do their part in giving back to the community. They are also involved in a Dance Marathon where they raise money for charity and are ramping up a Christmas donation drive to collect presents for underprivileged children at schools in the area.
When they’re at practice, Coach Ski challenges them to achieve their full potential. For instance, just this past month, Zac, a freshman swimmer on the team, had just finished doing sprints and was moving to the blocks during practice when Coach Ski pulled him aside to challenge him to do a 50-yard sprint without coming up for air, something that Zac had been struggling with.
“He sat down with me to tell me that I could do it, and I ended up doing it, and it was easier than I thought. I really appreciated that he was able to do that for me and help me fix something on the spot like that.” — Zac, St. Ambrose Swimmer
Many of the kids that are recruited are swimmers who might’ve been looked over by Division 1 schools because they didn’t have the same level of experience. “What I’m looking for when I’m trying to recruit is athletes with a potential to grow, who have a passion for the sport,” says Coach Ski. At St. Ambrose, he gives these swimmers a chance to compete and excel.
Even though swimming is an individual sport, the swimmers break into groups based upon their events during practice and help push each other with positive feedback and friendly competition. At a competition, teammates rely on each other to score points for the entire team, and it’s important for them to cheer each other on.
One of the biggest questions that Coach Ski tries to answer is what motivates each of his athletes on the team. Being able to be approachable is important because athletes trust him enough to tell him when a certain method doesn’t work well for them.
Recently, after telling one of his athletes to model her style on another swimmer on the team, she approached him and told him ‘that isn’t going to work for me!’ It’s important for the athletes to trust him with this feedback so he can come up with motivations that fit them.
“You try and give each and every one of them what they need, at the time they need it. You can’t treat them all the same, they’re all different.” — Coach Ski
Even coach has his off days where he’s exhausted, but he is able to come into practice and get charged back up by the positive spirit from his team. He understands that everyone has their off days, and pushes his team to be the best that they can on any given day.
“All I ask is that you give 100% of what you’re capable of giving me today. That doesn’t mean you come in and have a bad day, maybe your dog died, you and your girlfriend just broke up, give 100% of what you’re capable of giving today.
As a coach, you need to be able to recognize that, are they giving 100% of what they’re can give today? If someone’s falling off and not giving 100%, you need to know what’s going on in the rest of their life, not just what you’re seeing in the pool or on deck that day. It may not be the same as tomorrow, tomorrow you might do more. And maybe the next day, even less than before.” — Coach Ski
We are very pleased to honor Coach Ski as one of our top nine 2018 Best Leaders of the Year. His positive spirit is an inspiration to everyone here at BAND. We hope that his story has inspired you!
Please be sure to check out all of the other amazing stories from our Finalists, and vote for who you think deserves to be named BAND’s 2018 Best Leader of the Year!
