Swim instructor Tania Chadwick joined the upper school varsity swim team as a coach during the start of this year and hopes to use her experience to strengthen the team this season.

Coach Chadwick has had prior experiences involving the Harker community and expresses enthusiasm for her position.

“I have two kids who go to Harker, one to the lower school and one to the middle school but being a swim coach has been a lifelong dream,” she said. I’m at a job I’ve always wanted to do at a place I know was right for me,” Chadwick said.

The Coach’s goals of training for the upper school students differs due to the range of experiences across the board.

“You’ll find that everyone has a slightly different goal,” she said. “Some students swim year round so they high goals and they’re working all year to achieve that. And you’ll have other students who are not as experienced and still want to get better.”

Her love for the sport comes from her life-long experiences practicing and competing. She has won many awards including South Coast Conference Swimmer of the Year at Golden West University and Collegiate Athletic Association Swimmer of the Year.

“I was always in the water. Ever since I was born, I loved swimming, even doing competitive swimming from when I was six,” she said. “It went through middle school through college to the NCAA in college.”

Her college training has proven intense with the exercises done mirroring that of professional Olympic athletes.

“These days, you look at the top colleges now, and that’s where all those [Olympic athletes] come from; they’re from the collegiate program,” Chadwick said.

Unlike some of her counterparts who emphasize power and strength, Chadwick brings a focus on technical skill in her coaching.

“It wouldn’t matter how many hours you spent in the pool. If your technique is not up to par you won’t get any better,” she said. “We also work on the dives and turns”.

That approach is somewhat fitting considering how competitive swimming has been changing throughout the years. These adaptations are present in and out of the pool: changes in stroke technique and methods to record the sport.

“[Nowadays] there’s more emphasis on dry-land for your core like other sports have,” Chadwick said. “Just improvement on the overall body and nutrition: making sure everyone gets enough sleep. So I think that all of that aspect: just fine tuning the athlete and recognizing that the sport: the stroke is changing.”

The team prepares to compete in its first league meet on Friday at Monta Vista High.

This piece was originally published in the pages of The Winged Post on March 3, 2016.