Coach drives swim club to higher provincial ranking

For first-year coach Dean Henze and the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club (SLSC), it was a chance to stroke off item number one on the “To Do” list, just a little ahead of the “to be done by date.”

In mid-April, the well-renowned local club captured the Swim Ontario Division II team championships — a victory that vaults the SLSC up to Division I ranks for the first time in roughly a decade.

And while Henze, who accepted the head coaching position at the club last September, is pleased with the unexpected results, he is the first to admit that the proverbial “right place at the right time” scenario certainly came into play.

“It was just good timing on our part,” the Atikokan native said. “I was hoping top five... I didn’t think we had a chance to win, but I thought top two if things went really well.”

It was just the latest step in a coaching career that has spanned three different provinces for the confident University of Manitoba alumnus, and an important leap from a club perspective.

Kicking off his coaching journey initially while still swimming for his northern Ontario hometown club, Henze would move on to work in Winnipeg, Selkirk, Owen Sound, Vancouver and eventually Barrie, where he remained for more than 10 years before making the move north.

It’s a time line that has provided the former national qualifier the opportunity to develop a clear process of the training plan he wants to instill in his swimmers at SLSC. And while it might be easy to assume that this rapid success at Laurentian was clearly a short-term goal, Henze would argue otherwise.

“All of the programs I’ve run, in the past 15 years or so, have had disturbingly few 10 and under provincial champions,” he said. “We are so focused on making sure the kids can swim properly, that the emphasis on speed isn’t there at all.”

Which is not to say that Henze underestimates in the least, the direct correlation that will inevitably marry the two key facets of success. “Technical advances should lead to better performances.”

Make no mistake, the members of the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club knew exactly the competitive personality type that drives their coach toward excellence. It’s a mindset that, in his own words, made it very difficult to envision teaching swimming, if it did not involve making his athletes “bigger, stronger and faster.”

“If someone is demanding enough, the skill level of every swimmer should be at a certain level,” he said.

One senses the commitment required by youngsters with every word that Henze speaks.

With teams that practice several times a week, Henze’s years of experience have left him well-equipped to understand that a balance must be struck between making the almost daily sessions fun, while still addressing the unwavering goal of becoming better swimmers.

“Whether the kid is eight or 18, they still have to learn to streamline; they still have to learn to do butterfly and breaststroke and backstroke and freestyle – and more than just competently,” Henze said.

In this sense, he suggested that he shares a common philosophy with world class Sudbury swim coach Jeno Tihanyi, who passed away just a few years ago. “It’s all about making sure you do things better first. Then it becomes about making sure you can do these things better under stress, at speed.”

Still, he is prone to acknowledge that winning the Division II title is not necessarily the bi-product of his coaching vision working it’s way through all aspects of the Laurentian Swim Club in just eight short months. “I think we just showed up with the best team, and you don’t necessarily know that going in.”

In fact, with very little rest provided to his swimmers in the days leading up to the championships, Henze remained realistically grounded in his approach, setting expectations that were very much in line with countless coaches in a variety of different sports.

“We were going to be our best, and if someone was going to beat us, they were damn well going to earn it.”

The locals were led by an impressive performance from the 13 and over grouping — a crew that features the likes of Kelly Hotta, Justin Burton-McCarthy, Justin Leclair, Colin Hirschfeld, Jacob Toner, Kyleigh Commito, Molly Green, Logan McGinn and Spencer Hirschfeld, just to name a few.

“They swam their brains out,” Henze said. And while he knows full well that remaining within the 17-team Division I classification and avoiding relegation will be no easy chore, the game plan is clear.

It’s a path to which Henze is committed. Based on the early results, one can hardly blame his swimmers for following suit.

Randy Pascal is the voice of Eastlink Sports and the founder of SudburySports.com.