The Etobicoke Swim Club in Etobicoke, Canada, has announced that Marc Spackman will be taking over as their new head coach. Spackman will come into the position a few months after former head coach Rob Novak announced that he would be joining the High Performance Centre – Ontario staff.
In the interim, Brett D’Souza and Nail Kaddache have been serving as co-head coaches for ESwim. Novak held the position of head coach for a bit over two years, having returned to the club as head coach in July 2020. Novak had previously served as the head age group coach for ESwim from 2008 – 2012.
Spackman is a newcomer to the club and has spent nearly all of the past decade working as the head coach of the Royal School Wolverhampton, a bit north of London, England. Spackman has coached many former and current British national team swimmers including Matt Richards who recently qualified for the 2023 World Championships by winning the men’s 200 freestyle at the British Championships.
He has also coached Paralympic gold medalist Robert Welbourn, Olympian Sophie Allen, Olympian Alice Dearing, and Olympian Elizabeth Simmonds. Additionally, Spackman was a member of the New York Breakers coaching staff during the two most recent International Swimming League Seasons, in 2020 and 2021.
Spackman had great success in his own swimming career before beginning as a coach. He represented Great Britain at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, contributing to his nation’s 5th-place finish in the men’s 4×200 freestyle. Spackman also won a silver medal in that relay at the 1999 and 2000 short course World Championships and a bronze at the 1998 long course World Championships.
ESwim is one of Canada’s top club teams and has been in existence for more than 70 years. The team recently put five swimmers onto Canada’s World Junior Championships squad: Kevin Zhang, Ella Jansen, Elan Daley, Delia Lloyd, and Victoria Raymond. It is also the home club of the newest World Record breaker, Summer McIntosh, though she now trains in Florida.
Spackman said the following of his appointment as head coach:
“I believe that there are no limits, and that with the right mindset, your capacity to improve is infinite. I’m looking forward to meeting ESWIM’s exceptional athletes and working together to achieve their goals.”
Eswim are a model club in so many ways. Not sure why Swim Ontario picked Oakville Aquatic club as one of only 3 clubs as mentors in their mentorship program. Clearly they weren’t paying attention to how far Oakville have fallen off on the wet side.
A model of taking credit for someone else work? 4 out of 5 swimmers who are mentioned as Canadian World Junior Championship teamers from ESWIM are not training there for at least a year (3 of them are training under HPC-Ontario).
So I guess the club should take no credit for advancing these swimmers at the time they were with the club. All credit to HPC for being able to spot talent and recruit swimmers who got to the level they did with no assist from Eswim or coaches like Kevin T or Endi etc. It is fairly typical for clubs to “promote” their swimmers when they leave for usports, ncaas etc. It’s also not unusual for college coaches to continue to work with swimmers age group coaches when they go to college.
ESWIM also likes to be proud of Ruslan Gaziev recently, pretending they didn’t expelled him from the club just a couple of months before the Junior Worlds in 2017 jeopardizing his performance
Aren’t every club doing the same thing, i.e. taking credit for someone else’s work? Some clubs even take credit for swimmers who never ever trained with them. At least the five swimmers mentioned above trained with ESwim at some point before certain circumstances caused them to leave the club. Nonetheless, they chose to wear the Eswim caps when they compete, though then don’t have to.
ESWIM was the model in the past 50 years with the amount of Olympians/Fina A qualifers and most recent sucess at the past Olympic Trials, but how the ESWIM board and president have dismantled the club and mindset regarding high performance is terrible. From what the community has heard, hopefully the new Head Coach knows what he got himself into and current coaches will survive this uphill battle.
I find your comment about the Eswim board quite amusing…
Which Board / President are you referring? The club’s current president, is doing tireless work (in collaboration with the current board and coaching staff) to promote the club, build upon a high performance culture, which includes the recruitment and appointment of the new head coach. There have been 3 People who have sat as President of ESWIM in the last 5 years, and the current Board is more than 50% new Board Members in the last year. My guess is that you’re an ex-member who had/has issue with a past President/Board. Understandable, but the club seems to be going in the right direction and much of the credit goes to the current President, the volunteerism of the current board, as… Read more »
Did SwimOntario pick or was it based on interest from available mentors? Regardless, Eswim has been in flux with a rotating head coach since Kevin’s passing during the pandemic so tacking on a mentorship project with interim coaches seems like a stretch.
Check my email no where did it say they should have picked Eswim but you could have inferred it but I wasn’t suggesting that. . Additionally could you not say the same about Oakville re coach turnover and swimmer departures. Eswim still gets results on wet side unless you don’t consider the margin of victory at OSCs significant enough. Oakville does not. Only oak medalist at Easterns were para and congrats to them. Only 4 swimmers at trials. Eswim I believe had 25 plus.
Ok – i will bow down to Edwin’s results lol. Classic central region chest thumping….
Regardless, I’m fairly certain the mentorship program is based on I treat and Eswim didn’t throw its hat in the ring.
Brilliant catch for Canadian swimming – congrats and good luck.
Another coach leaving the Uk to advance Canadian swimming