About the coach
The second time you fall in love with water.
Most adults I work with were swimmers as kids. Then life happened, and the pool stopped being a place that felt like home. My job is to give it back.
born
Sausalito, '88
Stroke
Distance free
Best 1500
16:42 (NCAA)
Coaching since
2012
Athletes
200+
Pool
Laurel Aquatic
story
How I got on deck.
I started swimming because I was a bad runner and my mother needed somewhere to put me. By thirteen I was racing the 1500. By eighteen I'd been recruited to swim distance free at Stanford.
I captained the team senior year, made one NCAA final, and learned exactly enough about being mediocre at an elite level to know I didn't want to coach the elite. I wanted to coach everyone else. The triathletes who can bike and run but white-knuckle the swim. The forty-something who hasn't been in a pool since high school. The kid whose parents want them to be water-safe before camp.
I started coaching in 2012 at a club in Berkeley. Got my Level-3 in 2015. Took over Laurel Masters in 2019. Started taking private athletes a year later — slowly, by referral, because I didn't want to be running a business while I was figuring out how to coach.
I'm still figuring it out. The water keeps the standards honest.
philosophy
Four things I believe after 14 years on deck.
01
Stroke is taught from the spine, not the shoulders.
Almost every adult freestyle problem I see — slipping water, breathing late, sinking legs — traces back to rotation. We fix the body before we fix the limbs.
02
Confidence is a skill, not a personality trait.
If you panic in deep water, you don't have a fear problem. You have a breath-control gap. We close it with progressions, not pep talks.
03
Volume can't fix what technique broke.
More yardage on a bad stroke makes a bad stroke faster — for a while — and then injures you. Technique first, always.
04
The water tells the truth.
I can talk about stroke for an hour. The pool will tell you in 25 meters. Most of my coaching is just helping you hear what the water is already saying.
Timeline
Receipts of my own.
Book a consult
Better swimming starts with one session.
Tell me where you are and where you want to be. I'll tell you if I can help, and if I can't — who can.
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