Photo by Rowan Bennetti

Math teacher and Assistant Coach Allison Glenn is excited to start the Dreyfoos swim and dive season. “What I’m looking forward to most is everyone performing at their personal best. I think that swimming makes it interesting because it’s a team and an individual sport,” Ms. Glenn said.

Math teacher Allison Glenn was able to turn her passion of swimming into a teaching opportunity when she accepted the job as the new 2015-16 Assistant Coach of the Dreyfoos swim and dive team.

Throughout her whole life, Ms. Glenn wanted to be a swim coach, but the previous schools she taught at did not have a swim team.

“I have never coached before but it is definitely something I have been interested in for a while,” Ms. Glenn said. “My experience comes from when I swam competitively throughout all of middle, high school, and college.”

Ms. Glenn hopes to use her background in swimming as a stepping stone for coaching at Dreyfoos. For a coach, having a background in swim can drastically help; being able to relate to your players is a critical aspect of coaching. Using her experience as a swimmer, Ms. Glenn hopes to be able to guide and teach these students the fundamentals of swimming.

“In practice we mix it up every day: some days are endurance and we go with length and distance types of exercises,” Ms. Glenn said. “Some days we focus on flip turns. The next day we may work on perfecting their stroke. For the most part practice is all about trying to connect all their skills together.”
Having an experienced swimmer as a coach will aid the team this season not only in their performance but also in their fundamentals.

“I think we are going to do great,” Ms. Glenn said. “What I’m looking forward to most is everyone performing at their personal best. I think that swimming makes it interesting because it’s a team and an individual sport. The team chemistry [that we have right now] is excellent and everyone is doing great in practice.”