Get ready to meet the Spartans new swim coach! She brings a ton of experience and passion to the pool, and she’s ready to help our team make it to state this season. With her help, the Lady Spartans will be diving into new challenges and swimming towards success. Let’s meet their new coach, Michelle Walker. 

Diving into meeting Walker, she previously coached the Golden Marlins, in Golden Colorado for three years. This team is a non-profit summer club for ages up to eighteen. In college she made some side cash coaching triathletes. Adding on to that, she has been teaching swimming lessons since she was 16. She still offers private swim lessons for all ages. 

Walker has a few goals that she wants to reach this year with the swimmers. She was talking about how she was going to teach them about intervals and heart rate and how those go together. For the overall team milestone, she wants everyone to get a state qualifying time. This will be a stretch, especially for the underclassmen, but she plans on trying her best to get everyone there. 

In order to get the Spartans to this point, she has strategies to improve their techniques and performance. She mentions how the team is in an arc of their season. The team is currently ending their base and getting into the build of their swimming. They are going to continue building, getting stronger, and approaching new personal records (PR). 

With the help of assistant coaches, Walker is able to keep every level of swimmer feel included and valued. When someone is behind in swimming, one of the assistant coaches will help them and focus on them individually, which also helps improve the team’s skill as a whole. 

This past summer, Walker coached the Salida Cyclones! She was an assistant coach for the past few years, but this year she got the opportunity to be the head coach for them. She really enjoyed coaching the younger ones and was really impressed with their attitudes.  

In the first swim meet, the Spartans did really well! Although some swimmers were upset about not hitting PRs, their technique was immaculate. 

Walker likes staying updated with swimming techniques to help the team out. She does this by looking up drills on the internet frequently. She also stays in contact with people she had in college swim and check what their favorite drills are. They just had a college swimmer come and visit so Walker wanted to see what she was learning. 

All of this leads her to being an exciting addition to the Salida Swimming Team family! She is a talented swimmer and an even better coach. Everyone is looking forward to seeing where she takes the team in her time as coach.