Led by Event Director Alford Green, Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s meet management team ― Spencer Coffin, Mark Wild, Ricky Coffin, and Adriana Owen ― organized and ran two successful New England LMSC championship meets in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Without this team, there would not have been any NELMSC championship meets during the 2021-2022 season.
In December 2021, WPI hosted over 200 Masters swimmers at the Colonies Zone and NELMSC Short Course Meters Championship. Four months later, in April 2022, the group hosted the Colonies Zone & New England LMSC Short Course Yards Championship. In a post-meet survey, 93% of meet participants were “satisfied” or “very satisfied with the meet overall. A similar percentage said they were “likely” or “very likely” to attend a NELMSC championship meet the following season.
With unflappable good humor, Green and his team pulled together two consecutive successful meets and overcame myriad obstacles, including so many pandemic-related uncertainties, compressed planning timeframes, and bureaucratic red tape. Swimmers from across New England were thrilled to have a chance to compete after a difficult and uncertain period of pool closures, team furloughs, and the disappearance of all competitive swimming opportunities.
Green, who received the NELMSC Coach of the Year award in 2016, was the founding coach of Worcester Area Masters, which launched in May 2011. Within a few years, he took over as meet director for the December NELMSC and Colonies Zone SCM Championship, which has been held at Worcester Polytechnic Institute since 2015. He also serves as assistant coach for the Crimson and Gray swimming and diving team at WPI.
Not just a coach, the 2012 graduate of WPI who holds a degree in civil engineering, is also a fierce competitor. Green swam sprint freestyle and butterfly during his four years on the WPI varsity team. As a Masters swimmer, he’s notched two dozen Top 10 times and earned All-American Honors.
Green grew up in Kingstown, Jamaica, and immigrated to the United States in 2008 when he enrolled at WPI. An LGBT asylum seeker himself, Green now works as the director of the LGBT Asylum Task Force in Worcester, a ministry of the Hadwen Park Congregational Church. He was awarded the Eleanor Hawley Human Rights Award in 2019 by the City of Worcester’s Human Rights Commission for his work.