February 7, 2012
WRITTEN BY SHARON ROBB
Matt Jordan looked right at home, surrounded by young, eager swimmers asking about their times and races this past weekend at the Coral Springs Open Invitational.
Jordan, 26, joined the South Florida Aquatic Club coaching staff last week as an age group at the Coral Springs Aquatic Complex.
“I feel very comfortable on the pool deck,” Jordan said. “I have felt that way since I was younger. I really like it here.”
Jordan started swimming when he was 8. He swam until he was 12 when he took a few years off.
“I thought I was going to be an NBA player and quickly found out that’s harder than it sounds,” Jordan said with a smile. At least he shares the same last name and initials as basketball great Michael Jordan.
Jordan returned to swimming competitively when he got to high school and has been involved with the sport ever since.
Jordan grew up in Ellsworth, Maine, a small town next to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. “Lots of woods, slow kind of living, I liked it,” he said.
Jordan has coached in Florida before when he worked with a USA Swimming club in Key Biscayne for nearly two years at TKA (Team Key Aquatics), no longer a competitive team.
Jordan graduated from Wheaton College, a private liberal arts college in Norton, Massachusetts, near Boston and Providence, R.I. where he studied history and psychology and swam competitively. He swam all four strokes and competed in sprint races. His specialty was backstroke and butterfly
“I always knew I wanted to be a coach, that’s what my passion was,” Jordan said. “Everybody that ever encountered me at the pool or on the pool deck told me I would make a great coach.
“I seemed to coach as much as I swam. It’s something I did in college. I would help a lot of my teammates out before their races, kids that were my age. They would come to me for advice and technique.”
His first coaching job was a variety of swim lessons, private lessons and swim technique with younger kids for a local YMCA team while he was in high school. “I even coached masters swimming while I was in high school,” Jordan said. “It was nice they listened to me.”
In college, he was a volunteer coach for a USA Swimming team that trained at Wheaton’s pool.
When Jordan was hired for the SOFLO job he was working at a boys and girls club in Watertown, Mass. near Cambridge. He was coaching 70 kids, ages 7-17.
“It was a less competitive environment and that’s what I kind of struggled with,” Jordan admitted.
“I thrive on the competition. I thrive on personal bests, achievements and goals. It was more of a youth club recreational team. In the short time I was there I ended up making the team pretty competitive.”
Jordan is excited about his new job and opportunity to coach in Florida again.
“This is a tremendous opportunity and I am very fortunate to be here, I love this stuff,” he said. “I was aware of the history at this pool and had a pretty good sense of what it was all about. I followed Florida Gold Coast swimming even after I left.”
Jordan is among some of the youngest coaches in the Florida Gold Coast.
“I love coaching in general,” Jordan said. “It could be age 7, 17 or people my age. It’s really my passion in general, so there really is no age that I can coach better or I feel more comfortable with. I knew the void had to be filled for the 12-and-unders and 10-and-unders here so I am excited. I will be working with the White and Blue Group every day.”
Jordan is already starting to develop a seasonal and yearly plan and putting his workouts together.
Asked what his proudest accomplishment was in his own swimming career, he answered “that’s a tough one, really tough.
“I know it’s hard for a competitive swimmer to get a best time every meet, but that’s something I tried to do even though at times it was unrealistic given the amount of training that I was doing or how sore and tired I might have been after back-to-back meets,” Jordan said. “I tried to focus on every little thing I did wrong on the previous race and fixed it. That usually ended up working to my advantage.”
Jordan is enjoying getting to know his swimmers and their parents. He said he is overwhelmed by the parents hospitality and making him feel welcome. A meet-and-greet pizza party was held where Jordan got the chance to meet everyone.
“The kids are great,” Jordan said. “The best quote of the week that I got was after the first practice when I was just learning the names and they were learning mine. They asked me whether I would be here tomorrow and I said yes. And they said really, what about the next day? I said if it’s okay with you I’d like to stay here for the whole week and we’ll see what happens. They said great.
“Right then I knew it was good. I saw the enthusiasm. I can already see what consistency and what dedication from a coach can do for this group. I think it’s going to be a really great experience for the kids and myself alike.
“They have already started to understand what I am looking for and the things we are doing in practice directly correlates to the races and the outcome. If they become more aware of that and I stay on top of it, then we are going to have some good success.”
Sharon Robb can be reached at sha11cats@aol.com
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