Swim Ireland has announced John Szaranek as the new head coach of the National Centre (Limerick), making another coach borrowed by Ireland from their island neighbors. In the last 2 years, Ireland has brought in Jon Rudd as their new National Performance Director, hired away from Plymouth Leander in England; appointed Ben Higson as head coach of the National Centre (Dublin) and National Senior Team Head Coach from University of Stirling in Scotland; and have now picked up Szaranek also from Scotland.
He spent the last 2+ years as a performance coach at the University of Edinburgh. Prior to that, he spent 6 years as the head coach of the Carnegie Swimming Club. Among his most prominent pupils are his own children, Mark and Jack, who currently train in the United States at the University of Florida. Mark, the older of the 2 brothers, was the 2017 NCAA Champion in the 200 IM and swam at both the 2017 World Championships representing Great Britain and the 2018 Commonwealth Games representing Scotland.
John Szaranek has represented Scottish Swimming as the Lead Coach of both the Scottish Youth Development Squad and the Scottish Youth Squad and he was also a member of the Scottish international coaching team at the most recent Celtic Tri-Nations Meet. John was the 2010 Scottish Development Coach of the Year and the 2013 Scottish Para Coach of the Year; he also won a Scottish National Age Group Championship team title with Carnegie Swim Club.
Szaranek will take his new role officially on April 23rd.
No members of Ireland’s 2017/2018 National Squad currently train at Limerick, but 5 members of their national Performance Pathway roster do: Eoin Corby, Edel Daly, Cadan McCarthy, Finn McGeever, and Jeremy O’Connor.
“I am very excited to have been given the opportunity to work for Swim Ireland at the National Centre in Limerick,” Szaranek said. “I am very much looking forward to supporting the Senior Leadership Team as they strive to deliver success at World and Olympic levels. I am particularly looking forward to working with the coaching staff and the athletes through the fantastic facility in the University of Limerick. These are exciting times for swimmers in Ireland and I want to be a major factor in what helps them to be able to fulfil their dreams and ambitions. I strongly believe that we have a team in place to see this nation truly deliver on the world stage.”
“We are thrilled to have John on board and for him to join us at this exciting time,” Jon Rudd said. “It’s just over a year since this new Performance team started to assemble and John brings something extra to the table in terms of both his coaching and his life experience outside of the pool environment. We knew that it would always be a challenge to replace someone with a track record as impressive as Lars’ but in John we have achieved that and then some; you always know things are moving in the right direction when the strength and depth of your applicants goes through the roof – as it did in this case. To be able to offer Irish athletes the chance to work with John and his team on a daily basis in a world class resource at the University of Limerick and UL Sport is a major string to our bow and one that I look forward to seeing develop over the ensuing months.”
William Wallace is in Scotland too
Stirling University is in Scotland too