Welcome! And who am I?

Hello, all!  Thanks for finding this new blog of mine.  Swimming has been a part of almost my entire life.  I started competitive swimming at the age of 5 back in 1981.  Since then I have been a swimmer, except for a couple small breaks as an adult.  I swam in Connecticut with a few different teams growing up (Watertown Rec, Newtown FAST and Woodbridge Aquatic Club plus my high school, Watertown HS, and college, Union College, teams).  I was extremely fortunate to have some great coaches along the way who helped me develop into a person and swimmer I am proud of.

After the traditional end of my college swimming career while beginning my professional career at IBM, I was fortunate to be able to swim one more season as I had some unfinished business in the pool.  After that season, I still loved the sport, but I knew I could not continue the same level of training with a full time job.  However, I wanted to stay involved in the sport I loved and that gave me so much.  In the spring of 2000, I offered to help out with the team (Newburgh (NY) Sharks) and they let me coach their Junior Group (ages 9-12).  I was so quickly hooked on coaching.  As much as I loved the sport as a swimmer, I loved it even more as a coach and I was so lucky that I immediately found the age group I wanted to coach.  I have coached at a couple other teams along the way until where I am today.  I currently coach with the Cornwall branch of New York Sharks Aquatics in New York's Hudson Valley.  I still coach the same basic age group.  During this time I have been still been doing masters swimming (and occasionally doing an event or two at some USA Swimming meets with my swimmers) with various levels of commitment based on how busy work and coaching keeps me.

So, it is obvious how chlorinated I am so many years in and around pools.  I have learned so much from my own coaches, my peer coaches, my teammates, and my swimmers.  I decided that I want to share some of that knowledge.  Through this blog, I will try to share some insight and my thoughts on swimming and swim coaching.  Most of it will be from the perspective of age group swimming (ages 9-12) since that is where most of my experience is.  Please feel free to contact me at swimcoachmatt99@gmail.com with questions or comments.  Along with this blog, I will maintain a Facebook Page(Coaching with Intregrity and Compassion -- @IMaSwimCoach), Twitter (@IMaSwimCoach) and Instagram (IMaSwimCoach) accounts.  Besides linking these blog posts, I plan to share other articles that I think might interest coaches, parents and swimmers.  Feel free to start a discussion through any of these social media accounts.  I hope I can spread some of my knowledge while learning from my audience, too.

New blog focus

If anyone is still out there that reads this, I will revive this blog with a new focus.  The new focus will be on writing opinion articles about my beliefs and thoughts on age group swim coaching.  Stay tuned for details over the next month or so.  I would like to get this going around the usual start of the fall/winter swim season in early September.