USMS Top Ten Achievements – 4 individual
USMS Certified Coach
SWIMMER magazine May-June 2010 article – “Extreme Stroke Makeover” – Breaststroker Learns the Value of the Streamline
SWIMMER magazine May-June 2009, “Web Workout”
I started swimming at the age of 5 for the Tanterra Tarpons Swim Club in Olney, Maryland, and, for the next 13 years, I transformed into a decent backstroker/IM'er. It was just one of many sports my parents enrolled my brothers and me into, in an attempt to exhaust the energy supply daily. I continued to be an all-sport athlete throughout my child/teen years, but despite whatever sport I played: soccer, lacrosse, hockey, I always also did swimming (mostly with LRAC). My time in the water waned at the end of my high school career as the final (of four) high schools I attended did not have a swim team.
I picked up swimming again in my sophomore year of college when I walked on to the Division III team at Connecticut College to reprise my former role as a backstroker. That lasted only a short time as I realized that I enjoyed the distance workouts way more than the sprint/IM-focused workouts, so I switched to learning how to swim the 500/1000 combo. During this time, our team needed to raise funds for our annual winter training trip to Florida, and one of the ways we did this was by coaching the Eastern Connecticut Masters Club (ECM) in our pool after our workouts were over. While many of my teammates dreaded having to do this, I loved it so much that I did it nearly every day after practice and found that I had a passion for it.
That following summer, I ended up getting a job as a lifeguard and Masters swim coach at Barrington YMCA (in Barrington, RI), and, for the next two years at school, I morphed into a full-time swimmer dropping all of my other sports pursuits while also coaching ECM year-round when I could make time. I also continued to coach the Barrington Y Masters in the summers and became the Barrington Y age group coach for the final two summers of my college career.
After college, I moved to Hastings-on-Hudson, NY, to be a Latin teacher and, to make some extra money on the side, I also coached the White Plains Masters (and lifeguarded) for my one year in NY. After that, I moved back to MA and got a job as the Director of Technology at Cushing Academy in Ashburnham, MA. Cushing did not have a swim team, but I was able to rent lanes at Greenwood Swim Club and Wachusett Community College to train Cushing kids who wanted to continue with their swim training.
After two years at Cushing, I moved to Winchester, MA, and decided to get back in the pool for myself. I joined the Minuteman Masters team coached by Rich Axtell, which was swimming at Hanscom AFB in the LCM pool. I loved swimming with that group and felt like I had discovered something so special with the NEM Masters community at large.
I wanted to give back to NEM, and there was no shortage of opportunities to do so. I helped build the new NEM website, helped with recovering the NEM registrar database after a terrible data crash, joined the NEM organization leadership, and even devised a new model for team scoring, which helped the little teams get as much recognition as the big teams!
Though I was still chasing that elusive sub-5 for my 500 time (which seemed to get further away with each year) I did go on to win the mile at LC Nationals in 2004 and swim the mile fly at 2007 SCY NE Champs to settle a bet. Those were my two crowning moments in the pool.
Rich was gracious enough to give me a chance to be an assistant coach at Minuteman, and that was a huge turning point for me. After a few years of coaching (and swimming) with Minuteman, I eventually started my own team, West Side Swim Club, in Sudbury, MA. I spent the next three years rethinking everything I knew about swimming and applying it to a Masters and Triathlete program. Nothing was off the table, and I obsessed about everything from dissecting the perfect stroke, using active rest in workouts, incorporating mid-set drylands, and trying to somehow put it all together.
I was very honored to receive the first annual Tom Lyndon Award in 2011 and am still so grateful to have been a part of such a wonderful community after all these years.