STROKE. Tacoma Swim Club head coach Jay Benner watches his swimmers during practice June 26 at Foss High School pool. Benner was recently a finalist for the United States Olympic Committee 2006 Developmental Coach of the Year.
He’s known to his swimmers as Coach Jay, but Tacoma Swim Club Head Coach Jay Benner, 41, worked his way from being just another kid in a pool to college swim standout and Olympic trials participant to being a finalist for one of the most prestigious awards in all of coaching – the United States Olympic Committee (USOC) 2006 Developmental Coach of the Year.
Though he didn’t take home the award June 23, he said it was just an honor to be recognized.
“It was a nice honor to be a finalist. It is something few people are honored with,” he said, noting he was the first swim coach ever to be a finalist in the developmental category.
Benner became a finalist for the USOC award after winning the USA Swimming Coach of the Year in 2005.
But Benner’s road to coaching success started decades ago while growing up in Seattle. He swam every chance he got and ended up swimming for the University of Washington.
Not only was he a University of Washington swim team stand out in the mid-1980s, but he’s also been ranked top 25 in the world in both the 400-meter Individual Medley (IM) and the 1,500-meter free, which later took him to the Olympic trials in 1984 and 1988 – though he never achieved his dream of swimming on an Olympic team.
“I had a great career…It was my goal to make an Olympic team which never happened but it certainly didn’t take anything away from the experience,” he remarked, adding the 1988 trials was his last big hoorah in the pool.
But after all his personal success in the pool, Benner said moving into the direction of coaching wasn’t the no-brainer everyone thought it would be for him.
“I hadn’t planned on necessarily doing it but in 1989 I went over to Washington State University (WSU) (to coach) for seven years and decided (coaching) was something I wanted to pursue and that (opportunity) allowed me to do so,” he explained, adding he didn’t know why he hesitated to go into coaching because his whole life had been centered around swimming.
“To be able to do something you love and have a passion for is not a job,” he continued. “I’ve been fortunate in that respect and am able to do something that excites me all the time.
“(Coaching) is something I feel challenged by just like in my own swimming,” he continued. “I was highly self-motivated and had very high goals for myself and was used to that process of setting goals and working towards them and to do this and to have that love for something you really enjoy was something that made (going into coaching)” a good choice for me.
After his stint with WSU, Benner decided to take to the water once again in 1993 and joined a professional marathon swim circuit – swimming in exotic locales around the world including Europe, Egypt, and Argentina.
“The marathon (swimming) was sort of like my second career,” Benner said. “It was a great way to see the world and make money doing it and see (swimming) from a different (angle).”
After 10 years traveling the globe, Benner took the head coaching position for Tacoma Swim Club in 1997 – replacing coaching legend and Tacoma Swim Club founder Dick Hannula.
“(People) told me I had tremendous shoes to fill but I was never worried about that,” Benner said, adding that Hannula, who led the Wilson High School boys’ swim team to 24 consecutive state titles in his 32 years as head coach, has always been supportive of his successes as a coach and has stepped in to help coach when he has gone out of the country for competitions.
“He’s had a great impact on my coaching,” Benner noted.
Another man who Benner said has had a profound impact on his life is his father.
“He wasn’t an athlete but he had one of the most incredible work ethics of anybody,” he explained. “He invested a lot of time” in me.
And that invested time gave Benner an advantage not only in the pool, but when he became a father himself. On June 15, Benner and his wife welcomed their second child, a son, to their family. Benner has a 4-year-old daughter as well. But with all the time he spends coaching and with his family, Benner said he’s left with little free time.
“I have very little free time,” Benner laughed. “But I love to travel and a part of that has been tied in to my experiences as an athlete and a coach,” he said.
“My passion, my love is doing this – it’s the sport. I’ve been fortunate as an athlete to have a long career and a tremendous experience. Then I got to turn to coaching and have had a fair amount of success with it.”
As for the future, Benner said he sees himself still coaching some of the best swimmers in the world.
“This is my passion. This is my love. I will continue to coach because I love what I am doing and hope to continue to have opportunities to work with and develop kids to the highest level” they can go.
“Athletics and sports define human character in a lot of ways, that is why we like watching the Olympics,” he continued. “We strive to be as good as we can be and it is the goals that (these young swimmers) are chasing, and we are trying to develop kids here to be some of the best swimmers in the world, but they all have the same opportunity to get the same thing out of the sport and that’s the strong character traits.”
