For Rocklin’s swim team, the start of this year has been pretty normal. With a few weeks of dry land under their belts and the season about to start, this year’s swim team is shaping up to do pretty well. There’s one bug in the system, though: the previous varsity girl’s coach, Mrs. April Kenitzer, is on maternity leave, and someone needs to replace her during the season.

This replacement is the new girl’s head coach, Mr. Rob Scanlan, who has been coaching Rocklin’s competitive swim team, the Mavericks, for over a year now.

Sophomore Andrew Rutschmann has been swimming for the Mavericks for a while, and he has experience with Mr. Scanlan’s coaching style.

“He has a lot of background information when it comes to swimming,” says Andrew.

That background information comes from over ten years of coaching. He began his career at Foothill College, where he swam and coached the 8 and under program. At that time, coaching was just a job to get by as a struggling student, but it grew into a lot more than that.

“I never liked kids because I was a kid myself in college. But the love of swimming became a medium that naturally [built] great relationships with families and the community,” said Mr. Scanlan.

His passion for swim became a career, and now he has coached at the top levels of two nationally ranked programs – Santa Clara Swim Club and the Sierra Marlins.

This expertise should come in handy, as Rocklin’s coaching staff, including Mrs. Kristin Hamm and Mrs. April Kenitzer, has coaches that are passionate about swimming, but that have had no real experience building a team.

The change in staffing is also coming with a change in practice. In previous years, Rocklin’s team has spent their full two-hour practice time in the pool, but the new coach is bringing a core part of the Maverick’s training to Rocklin: crossfit.

The new practice schedule starts with 30 to 45 minutes of “dry land,” or exercises outside of the pool meant to train strength and endurance. This new addition to practice will hopefully increase the level of fitness on Rocklin’s team.

After dry land, the remaining hour and 30 minutes of practice will be devoted to swimming. All the year’s in-water workouts will be written in part by Mr. Scanlan, whose years of swimming and coaching experience will hopefully make workouts better, harder and more worthwhile.

Unlike other teams’ coaches who focus on improving by grinding hundreds of laps each day, Mr. Scanlan focuses his practices on drills and technical skills that will help improve each individual swimmer’s technique.

Mrs. Hamm, the boys head coach this year, says the motto of this year is “Work smarter, not harder.”

With buy-in from the athletes and some luck, this new approach should be a game changer for Rocklin swim.

A game changer is just what Rocklin’s team needs. In recent years, RHS swimmers haven’t had a great record. The team has been pretty average for the league it’s in, and most of its best swimmers swim for competitive teams, and don’t attend the daily school practices. With Rocklin’s new coaching and changes to practice, the future of Rocklin swim is likely to be a bright one.