A bit of a club coaching shuffle surrounding two of the country’s major USA Swimming age group programs has taken place.
Troy Emmons has resigned as the head coach of Katy Aquatics (west Houston) after he presented what the team called a “proposal in change of direction” which the Board of Directors “did not accept.”
He has been replaced by Jack Young who is best known for his work as the head age group coach at the Parkway Swim Club in Missouri. Interestingly, Young joins former Parkway Head Coach Jack Maddan, who recently became the head coach at FLEET, in suburban Houston. FLEET is just about 15 miles away from Katy’s home base.
Young has coached over 150 athletes to USA Swimming Top-16 lists, and has produced several Olympic Trials qualifiers. He joins another fairly high profile coach, Bill Sprague, on that staff. The club is recognized as a bronze medal recipient in USA Swimming’s club excellence program, a level 4 club in the Club Recognition program, and for the past year-and-a-half has been one of the country’ highest fundraisers in the annual Swim-a-thon program.
Meanwhile, Emmons has headed to Michigan Lakeshore Aquatics, where he has taken over as head coach and Aquatics Director of the program in Holland, Michigan. This is a role that was vacated when Don Kimble, also the head coach of Holland High School, stepped down earlier this year to take a job at Byron Center High School 30 miles to the east. Kimble’s new role will be a co-op team from Byron Center, South Christian, and Caledonia high schools.
MLA, as the team is known, has produced several Junior National Champions in the last few years, including 6 Olympic Trials qualifiers. He also coached the National High School Record in the girls’ 200 medley relay in 2011. That includes Virginia freshman standout Courtney Bartholomew, the 2013 ACC Freshman of the Year, who three-peated as a Junior National Champion in both the 100 and 200 backstrokes.
Troy’s a great coach. MLA is lucky to have him. Can’t say enough good things about him and all he did for those he coached at West Coast Aquatics.
Having observed the Katy program over the last couple of years, I just wanted to say how lucky they are to have Bill Sprague as the Assistant Head Coach. He is phenomenal! Every team he has coached has had vast improvement. I now have learned that in the past 4 seasons with Katy, his group has been the top producing group on the team. Why he isn’t a Head Coach in the Gulf amazes me (a former swimmer of his).
as a former coach of the Gulf LSC who had direct access to all things KA, the move for Troy has layers . . . like an onion . . . a really stinky onion. Aside from the past history of the parent run board being a collective group of psychos, my guess is yes the opportunity opened in MI, but KA has more than enough skeletons in it’s closet to keep anyone and everyone on edge.
Well Recovering Gulf Coach I find it interesting that seem to know a great deal about Troy. Troy’s reasons for leaving have nothing to do with the board. I think the Katy and the Gulf are better off without him.
All that coach talent, all that athlete talent, in Houston area, and still Nitro is kicking their butt every year – why is that, Braden?
Board run team vs Coach run team. Also, numbers. But, at the Senior level of swimming (yeah Nitro came in 10th at NCSA this year, but not everyone goes to that meet, especially teams from Texas), Nitro still has a few things to prove.
Jack Young was at Katy well before Jack Maddan moved to Fleet.
Best of luck to Troy.
Psychdad, I don’t recall any teams from the Austin area being mentioned in this story. Please keep cheap shots to yourself. We know it’s hard to cherry pick swimmers from existing teams.
Have a nice day!
Jack did some pretty good work as Head Coach for a long time at Clayton Shaw Park in St Louis. He is a great man and a great coach. KATY is fortunate to have him.
I second that!
Wow, I did not see that coming.