VALPARAISO | A new coach is bringing new energy to the Valparaiso Swim Club.
This summer Manny Perez, 25, was named head coach of the club that was established in 1977. An assistant at Valpo High School for four seasons, Perez plans to use that experience to help him in his new position, which he officially took July 14.
"That's one of the biggest things as a club that our parents are happy about," Perez said. "There has not been a lot of unity (with the high school program) in the past. But now we have similar philosophies so we're hoping a lot of that carries over and there's an easy transition."
Perez will be spending a lot of time in the VHS pool. He will continue to assist Zach Hall in the boys program while also coaching the club team, which will practice weeknights starting Sept. 15 all the way until the end of February.
But swimming is in his blood. Perez, a Detroit-area native, swam in high school and would have competed in college but tore a biceps muscle his senior year.
He earned a degree from Cornell and attended law school at Valparaiso University before switching gears to get a teaching degree. Perez is in his first year teaching sixth-grade mathematics at Willowcreek Middle School in Portage.
He started working with age-group swimmers while at Cornell, and has parlayed that into a second career.
The Valpo club is for kids ages 5-18. Very young children start out learning the basics and work their way up through different levels to where they can compete in meets.
Throughout the season, the club will compete in different invitational meets on the weekends throughout Northwest Indiana. The ultimate goal for the more advanced swimmers is to qualify for the state meet at the end of February at the Indiana University Natatorium in Indianapolis.
Already there are approximately 100 kids in the program, but registration is ongoing until the middle of September.
"I've been meeting some of the kids, and I knew some of them from seeing them at practices sharing the (VHS) facility," Perez said. "There seems to be a lot of happy people and parents, and everyone is optimistic about where we're heading."
