Congrats to Alan Swanston– 25 Years with Stingrays
We are very pleased to let the membership know our Head Coach Alan Swanston, has hit a milestone of 25 years with the Club.
The Era Banner and York Region.com have written a wonderful article on Alan and his contributions to the Club, the Kids and the Community of Newmarket.
Congratulations from all of us at the Club Alan!
Read the full article below or click here
Longtime swim coach sacrifices sleep
Pool passion.
Alan Swanston is head coach of about 260 swimmers with the Newmarket Stingrays Swim Club. Staff photo/SUSIE KOCKERSCHEIDT
No one hears the 4 a.m. wake-up alarm. The administrative work crunched between 7 a.m. and after-school workouts is out of plain sight and the grind of an 11-month season rarely offers a day off.
Welcome to the lifestyle of a successful swim club head coach.
For the past 25 years, it has been Alan Swanston’s job to oversee the development of swimmers in the Newmarket Stingrays Swim Club. The results are sometimes spectacular. The long hours to produce those results — not so much.
It takes the Newmarket resident back to his student days at the University of Waterloo, where he was a national level swimmer for Canada at the same time as getting his feet wet in the coaching ranks as a club assistant.
“I was dead-tired all the time and that hasn’t changed much,” said Swanston, 52, who oversees about 260 swimmers.
“Getting up early and no days off can grind on you. I’m trying to get better at that, but it grinds on you. I think working with teenagers all the time keeps you younger.”
He sleeps in until 7 a.m. one day a week.
When Swanston arrived in town in 1986, only Quaker Pool offered year-round training facilities. Demolished a few years ago, Quaker is a memory and the club now works out at the Magna Centre, Ray Twinney Complex and St. Andrew’s College pools, all of which were built since he took over a club which numbered 40 or so swimmers when he arrived after a two-year stint as an assistant at the Windsor Aquatics Club. He hardly imagined a quarter-century later he would still be on the job.
“Obviously when I came here it was a small and pretty weak club,” said Swanston, part of a relay silver medal winning Pan Am Games team in 1979 that included Victor Davis and Mike West.
“The club has changed quite a bit to get to the point it is respected in Ontario and Canadian swimming.”
Longtime assistant coaches Ulf Ornhjelm and Caroline Teskey, both well into their second decades with the Stingrays, add stability to the club, which is among the best in Ontario and Canadawide.
“It’s unheard of in pro sports, too,” said Stingrays’ president Steve Kingston, concluding his 11th season on the club’s board, referring to Swanston’s longevity. “It’s one of the things we see as big selling factor for the Stingrays. There’s not a lot of movement and we see that as attractive to kids.”
Kingston marvels at the steadying influence Swanston has brought to the club.
“You’re constantly working with different kids,” said Kingston, whose own son, Brandon (University of South Carolina), is one of several Stingrays to earn an NCAA scholarship.
Inheriting a small, obscure club, Swanston saw the potential. But it was no simple task building to the point that the Stingrays produce national contenders and champions and regularly send athletes to international events.
“It’s a long, slow process to build a club like we have now,” Swanston said. “It’s not just what happens in the water, but a whole belief system through everybody from the coaches, parents and athletes.”
“When I came here, people didn’t believe you could come from Newmarket and be among the best in the world, or even the country. Now we’ve had people at the Olympics and win nationals, so the people coming up behind them believe they can, too.”
Among the success stories are Lindsay Seemann’s rise to Olympic qualifying for the 2008 Beijing Games. Now a sophomore at the University of Arizona, Seemann is one of many Stingrays to earn scholarships to NCAA programs over the years since Laura Adams blazed the trail at the University of Georgia in the early 1990s.
The number includes Swanston’s eldest of two sons, Matthew, now entering his junior year at Stanford University, one of the premier programs in the United States. Younger son Jeffrey, who is entering Grade 12 at Sir William Mulock Secondary School, is a hot prospect. Both teens are rising stars in the Canadian national program.
But it is not just the top talent that benefits from Swanston’s guidance.
“One of the things that really stands out is the passion Alan has for the sport,” Kingston said. “He coaches our 15 to 17 (year olds), but he is also on the deck for all of our splash workouts (for kids). He likes to work with the kids and that helps them be better swimmers later.”
It seems to get results.
“Some of the most rewarding moments for me are helping young people grow through the sport of swimming and seeing what they go on to do in their 20s and 30s,” the coach said. “When swimmers bring their kids to join our club, it shows they enjoyed their time here so much, they’re bringing their kids in for their own experiences.”
“I’m a stickler for technique and I’m not afraid to point that out to the best kid in the pool, and not always in a positive way.”
The Stingrays’ competitive season wraps up with two meets this summer in Montreal.
