Coaches: Rick DeMont, Ken DeMont & Don Swartz
A former standout swimmer at the University of Arizona, associate head coach Rick DeMont is starting his 21st season as a member of the Wildcat coaching staff. Arizona won both the men's and women's NCAA Championships in 2008.
For the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, China, DeMont is the head coach for the South African men's swim team. DeMont was an assistant coach to the gold medal winning South African men's swim team at the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.
DeMont, a four-year All-American, began his collegiate swimming career at the University of Washington from 1973-75. As a freshman at UW, he finished second in the 1650 freestyle and fourth in the 400 IM at the NCAA Championships. A two-year and eight-time All-America selection at UA, DeMont swam for the Wildcats from 1977-79.
DeMont is a former world record holder in the 1500m freestyle (1972), the 400m free (1973) and the 4x100 free relay (1977).
He has collected numerous titles, including National, Pan-American, World and Olympic champion. Following his senior year in high school, he was named World Swimmer of the Year. DeMont also pioneered negative split swimming (swimming a faster second half of a race than the first).
At the 1972 Olympic Games, DeMont was stripped of a gold medal in the 400m freestyle, when it was discovered he had unknowingly taken asthma medication containing the banned drug ephedrine. The next year, at the World Championships in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, DeMont erased all doubts of his greatness with an unprecedented performance. He swam a world record in the 400 free and, in the process, became the first man in history to swim that race in less than four minutes. To this day, he is still struggling to regain the medal from the International Olympic Committee. DeMont was rewarded for his athletic accomplishments in 1990, as he was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
Considered a world-renowned sprint freestyle coach, DeMont has been the subject of feature stories and up-and-coming swimming technique articles in numerous publications, such as Swimming World, Swim Technique, Splash and Men's Health magazines. In addition, DeMont has given lectures on swimming technique in countries all over the world. During his tenure with the UA program, he has coached an amazing 26 U.S. Swimming and NCAA individual national champions, as well as numerous national champion relay squads. In September of 1999, DeMont was inducted into the University of Arizona Athletic Hall of Fame.
DeMont, 51, is also an artist whose paintings have been shown locally and nationally. DeMont has two daughters (Angela, 22 and Tierra, 2). He and his wife, Carrie, reside in Tucson.
Ken DeMont began swimming at the age of 5 and was lucky enough to have Olympic Gold Medalist and Sullivan award winner Ann Curtis as his first coach. Ann stressed the importance of good technique that is still the basis of Ken's philosophy today.
In high school Ken was a High School All American while swimming at Marin Aquatic Club, a national power in the early to mid 1970's. The team was coached by Don Swartz, an innovator in training principles. Don is currently Ken's partner at North Bay Aquatics, an up and coming swim team in the San Francisco Bay Area. In high school, Ken was a finalist at the senior national level.
After high school, Ken attended the University of Arizona, where he was a 4 year All American swimming under the tutelage of Bob Davis and then Dick Jochums. Both coaches had trained Olympic medalists and many of their philosophies are still part of Ken's training methods.
After retiring from swimming, Ken jumped into coaching at the rec league level, where he coached the Tiburon Peninsula Club in Northern California. In the 14 years of leading that team, the TPC was league champions every season. Ken also ran a very successful lesson program, teaching young kids the principles of stroke technique that he learned from Ann Curtis many years ago.
Since then Ken has taken on swimming at the US Swimming level, first forming an age group team and more recently venturing into senior swimming. His current team, North Bay Aquatics has recently had its first qualifiers at the national level with the promise of more to come.
Ken has also run a successful Masters program for over 20 years, working with Tri-athletes and open water swimmers as well as pool swimmers. That same program exists to this day.
Ken is a father of two, who both happen to swim as well.
Don Swartz began his club coaching career in 1967 as an age group coach with George French at Ladera Oaks Aquatic Club in Northern California. After a stop in Davis, CA he moved to Marin County, CA to become Head Coach of the Marin Aquatic Club. From 1970 to 1976 he coached several swimmers to Olympic, World Championship and Pan-American teams including several world record times. One of his swimmers, Rick DeMont, became, in 1973, the first person to break the 4 minute barrier in the 400 meter free while winning the World Championships in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.
The Marin Aquatic Club had numerous high school All-Americans and regularly placed in the top 10 at the AAU National Championships. Don was a Board member of the American Swim Coaches Association and a featured speaker at several World Clinics for ASCA. He was a coach on the 1975 World Championship staff and on the 1977 National team staff for the dual meets in East Germany and Russia.
In 1977 Don founded the Creative Performance Institute and for 8 years specialized in teaching the mental side of the game to coaches and athletes. His workshops covered topics including: goal setting, risk taking, anxiety management and visualization. His clients included many high school, club and collegiate teams. He also worked internationally in Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Sweden and Ireland.
In May of 2005 Don re-entered the active coaching world as a member of the highly regarded North Bay Aquatics program under the direction of Ken DeMont. North Bay Aquatics is a rapidly developing program with senior swimmers at the Sectional and National level.
His commitment is best stated as: "My goal is to provide the best coaching possible by continuing to expand my potential. I am still growing as a coach. Since I no longer coach in a vacuum my capabilities grow each week."
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