Assignment 2

The most rewarding group that I have been apart of has to be my high school swim team. A swim team specifically, shows how important it is to have a plethora of different personalities, strengths, and weaknesses, come together in order to reach a common goal. Any sports team shows how proximity plays a role in group interaction in general, especially in the form of group camaraderie.


When looking at the first aspect of the IPO model (input) it is important to look at the personnel, tasks, and tools/technology. I feel as though the task is relatively self-explanatory for a sports team. Majority of the time it is all about the W. The tools and technology for a swimmer more or less comprise of a pool, touch pads, goggles, a suit, a drag suit. As a team our number one tool was a phone or computer as a form of communication. For a swim team I would have to say the most important input is the personnel. It is more than just physical attributes but how people think and work that determines what role they may play. Our team had a ridiculous amount personalities represented. Between the 20-25 of us, were just about every social image imaginable. All of which you can see examples of in your everyday teen movie or drama.

The interaction process between players definately shows how proximity plays a huge factor. Because we spent so much time together, we became closer as a team, almost like a family. We used each other for motivation, and there was often a lot of healthy competition amongst ourselves, especially with people who swam the same race. On a team with as many different personalities as we had, conformity would seem to be a problem. Although our personalities didn't change, we did conform when it came to certain rituals and events. Beyond just practice we used to do bonding activities, had dinners, video game tournaments. One of our big rituals happened before away meets. On the bus we would all come together and have freestyle rap battles in order to clear our minds before our meet. Because we spent so much time together we were able to bond and conform to similar ideas and work ethics. Competitive swimming has four different strokes, as well as long distance and short distance swimming. On top of that there are individual races as well as relays. We each had our own specialty stroke which defined the role we played and the races we swam.

The output for our team, when it came to production, was high. We had multiple winning seasons, with our best year resulting in a tie for second in our conference. Group maintenance and team needs were relatively consistent throughout the season.