American Jerry Olszewski has been named the new head coach of Swimming New Zealand, and will begin his role there in September.
Olszewski is the current head coach and CEO of Arizona Gold Swimming, a club that has fostered the talent of top-notch youngsters like USC-bound Mark Jurek, Ohio State-bound Antonio Ramirez, and Arizona State-bound Ben Olszewski. All three boys, who recently graduated from high school, competed at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials in Omaha.
“We believe Jerry’s credentials ideally fit the needs for high performance swimming in New Zealand,” said Swimming NZ CEO Christian Renford. “Jerry has significant success creating and building programmes, and implementing a performance culture where they have prospered to international level. He also has a great understanding of the high performance environment needed to make this happen, and is hugely passionate about swimming and nurturing young people to reach their full potential.”
“It’s a real honour but I am under no illusions that it is a significant challenge and I hope to bring some of the things that have been successful for me into the New Zealand environment,” Olszewski said.“I want to set the expectation of what the group brings to each individual and what each individual brings to the group. I will be setting expectations and not settling for anything less than their best.”
Olszewski, before Arizona Gold, served as head coach at Scottsdale Aquatic Club as well as King Aquatic Club.
As Olszewski arrives at the helm of Swimming New Zealand, he’ll take over from Clive Power. Power was given the position a little over a year ago, after the resignation of Luis Villanueva, who started there in late 2012 and resigned last April.
I’m not being a hater H2tJ, but I assume your a New Zealand tax payer contributing to this experiment?
You say do your research, which I have just done and interestingly it confirms what I suspected that he has never been a National High Performance Coach or headed a college program. Does that mean he couldn’t do it, no it doesn’t. But he hasn’t done it before and he doesn’t have the sort of track record of podium results that you would expect from such an international appointment of this calibre. If NZ needs to go outside its borders to appoint a National Head Coach it needs to appoint one who has achieved something that no other coach in NZ… Read more »
Let’s see if those overseas based NZers decide to come back
This relationship will not last long
Told you it wouldn’t last long
Umm, who? Seriously, he might be a good (well-respected, even) club/age-group coach in Phoenix, but I bet even your readers will be going “Who’s that?”
How can you make a National Head Coach appointment overseeing an elite high performance program of adult swimmers with an American coach who has not had collegiate experience? What top platinum level coach in the US has not come out of the NCAA Collegiate system? By “platinum level”, I use the term as used by the Australians, meaning a coach who has directly coached swimmers to podium at Olympic and/or World Champs (and claiming swimmers that you may have coached in the past who subsequently went on to podium at Olympics/World Champs under a different… Read more »
Show some respect, Jerry is one of the great IM/distance coaches of this era. Quit being a hater and do a little research bud.
Scottsdale Aquatic Club, not Phoenix Swim Club.
Doh!