New coach seeking advice

Hello,

I (29M) have worked at the same high school for about five years and will be taking over as the head swim coach in the spring. I've played sports my entire life and I swam from ages 12-18. This will be my first time in a coaching position and I would love some advice from other coaches, swimmers, and parents. I am confident that I'll meet the challenge and will grow a lot from it, but I'm still nervous about how to make a strong impression and really do these students right. All advice is welcome, but these are my specific concerns:

For educators & coaches: -My highschool had a beautiful aquatics complex with an outdoor pool, dedicated equipment and locker rooms, bleachers, touchpads for meets, and a new scoreboard. The school I work at doesn't even have a pool, so all meets and practices will take place at public city pools. I also do not have a car, so I'm worried about transporting/storing gear in addition to coordinating the practice schedule with the pools. I want my swimmers to get the most out of their experience, but I have limited resources and don't want to burn myself out. -I'm also kind of concerned about my presence on campus. I work one-on-one with students in special ed, attending classes with them and providing very direct support. In this role I take more of a backseat, both to promote my students' independence, as well as grant the other students the normal amount of privacy to expect in a classroom (e.g. I would never tell another student to get off their phone during class). A big part of my job is being patient, waiting out tantrums, going on walks, offering choices, etc. To outsiders, it often just looks like I'm allowing bad behavior. I want to start the season off being clear about expectations, but I don't want it to feel forced or too overdone. Mutual respect is the goal.

For coaches & swimmers: -What do you like practices to look like? We'll have about two hours and I want to have a routine while still offering some variety. I know I want to do distance, sprints, drills, starts, etc, and I still want it to be fun. As a student we basically had unlimited time after practice to work on things like our starts and stroke counts, but we will be on a tighter schedule so I feel the need to schedule time in for that. I also want to incorporate weight training and team runs, but I feel like our pool time will be too valuable to not utilize. I thought about maybe a weekly run on the track before school?

-How should I utilize google classroom? I thought about at-home workouts, motivational videos, nutrition information, resources related to school, and a calendar for the season. I'm assuming most communication will happen through there, but I have never had to use it in my current role.

For parents & swimmers: -How do you feel about students driving each other to meets and practices? What about coaches or other parents? I'd like to have a directory of everyone's contact information. I expect that parents will feel widely differently so I was thinking of asking parents to email me if their child can be driven by teammates/coaches? This was never an issue when I was a student but I'm assuming the parents and coaches were all communicating with one another.

-Thoughts on team events? Our school is about a mile from the beach and I think it would be fun to have bonfires and play volleyball as a team. Everyone can swim but should I get extra permission to let kids in the ocean? Should I not allow them at all? I also loved having team dinners as a teenager and would like to continue that as a coach. We did potlucks at people's homes, and they were always a lot of fun. Is that something I should try to facilitate or should I just encourage the athletes and families to do it amongst themselves?

-I want to show up to practices and meets with waters and lots of snacks. Shit I'd like to feed them a meal after if I could. What do you think about asking families to help with this? I'd love it if they showed up with things but financial support would be great, too. Would you be comfortable venmoing your kid's coach for food after a meet? Would you be more comfortable paying the athletic department instead? I'm not sure how that would work and it would be way easier to use my venmo debit card card, but I get that people want the paper trail. I just don't want it to look like I'm misusing department money.

Feel free to add anything I didn't address here. Any advice is apprectiated.