'Ferryman' of Nghe An swimmers

Coach Le Xuan Cuong equips children with swimming skills to prevent drowning. Photo: Duc Anh

Light the fire of passion

Before becoming a coach at Nghe An Province Sports Training and Competition Center in 2016, Coach Le Xuan Cuong was a swimmer of the province. During his career, he won many medals, big and small, in tournaments organized by the Vietnam Swimming and Diving Federation. With his outstanding achievements, the coach born in 1982 was directly admitted to Tu Son University of Sports. His path to becoming a professional coach also started from there.

In all sports, training and leading a student to achieve success is extremely difficult. For swimming and diving, it is even more difficult. Because of the nature of this sport, recruiting students with real qualities is not a simple matter.

Coach Le Xuan Cuong shared: “Swimming is different from all other sports, we have to select the children when they are very young (from 7 to 9 years old). Nghe An is a province with a large land area and a large population, so there is no shortage of athletes. However, due to lifestyle and beliefs, many families do not want their children to leave their parents' arms at a very young age. Therefore, when we "target" the athletes, convincing their families to let them pursue a professional sports career is not easy.”

Leading students when they are only 8 or 9 years old, few people can fully understand the hardships that swimming coaches have to go through. Taking care of the children from food to sleep, teaching them how to take care of themselves and personal hygiene are the unnamed tasks that teacher Le Xuan Cuong has to manage every day.

Coach Cuong recalls: “When the children come to study at the center, they almost don’t know how to take care of themselves. In addition to teaching them about swimming, we also have to guide them on brushing their teeth, washing their faces, and doing laundry. Many of the children are still very young, so teachers like us have to take advantage of our time to do laundry, clean their rooms, and help them have a clean living environment, avoiding unnecessary diseases…”

The coach born in 1982 also added: “Recruiting students is difficult, keeping them to stay and study is even more difficult. I remember one day a new athlete came to practice at the center, missed home, missed his parents, so at night he kept asking the teacher to take him home. In the middle of the night, we had to stay with him, comfort him, call him so he could talk to his parents, help him ease his homesickness. Feeling sorry for the child, the next morning his parents came to ask the teacher to let him take a day off from practice to go home with his family. No matter how much we tried to persuade him, the family did not listen, so all the effort was wasted.”

Training a swimmer is really difficult for the coaching team in this sport. But with his love for the profession, Mr. Cuong always knows how to motivate himself to overcome those obstacles to reach the goals ahead for the province's sports.

Talking about the difficulties, Coach Le Xuan Cuong shared: “Nghe An’s weather is very harsh, the winter is very cold, the summer is hot “burning the skin, burning the flesh”, which greatly affects the training time of the athletes. Usually in the cold season, the children mainly practice on the shore, in the summer they have to wait until the heat is gone before going into the pool. Therefore, maintaining the form and improving the achievements of the children is extremely difficult. Therefore, this is also one of the disadvantages of Nghe An diving compared to the southern provinces”.

Coach Le Xuan Cuong's greatest joy is seeing the students always try their best on the green race track. Although the weather and environment in Nghe An are not really favorable, the students always know how to overcome themselves to reap sweet fruits.

The contributions of coach Cuong and the team of swimming and diving coaches have brought remarkable achievements to Nghe An sports.

This year, athlete Nguyen Tu Anh has won 3 gold medals, 1 silver medal, 2 bronze medals in the large fin category at the 2022 Swimming and Diving Championship for all ages. Besides, many other young athletes have begun to show their talents and bring home certain achievements.

Instructing students on basic movements before letting them get into the pool. Photo: Duc Anh

Popularize swimming

In addition to his main job as a Swimming Coach at Nghe An Province Sports Training and Competition Center, Mr. Le Xuan Cuong also actively participates in free training for children, teachers, coaches, and instructors at schools and swimming facilities in the province. This is a very meaningful job, because recently the risk of drowning accidents has been increasing.

With extensive experience in swimming training, Mr. Le Xuan Cuong has tried to find a teaching method that students can understand and apply most easily. In classes, he often combines theory and practice flexibly, spending more time for students to practice cross-training with each other. In particular, the rescue work is mentioned quite a lot by the teacher and wants everyone to practice proficiently, so that when situations arise, they will not be confused and lose the opportunity to save the victim's life.

Under the guidance of Mr. Cuong and the coaches at the Nghe An Province Sports Training and Competition Center, most of the children can swim after about 1 week to 10 days. Photo: Duc Anh

Teacher Cuong shared: “When teaching, we present situations and resolve them in the most impressive way. This will help students remember the lesson more easily. For example, in a drowning rescue practice, I intentionally made a mistake when approaching a victim underwater. And because the victim panicked, he hugged tightly, if an inexperienced person would have been in danger. But I solved that situation by learning how to break the victim's lock. Through this situation, I created an impression on the students, helping them understand and remember more deeply the lesson of drowning rescue. That is, you have to save from behind and when you make a mistake, you have to know how to break the lock.”