GIRLS COACH OF THE YEAR

Climber swim team in top 10 at state meet

Matt Baide | Jul 20, 20230

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Shelton girls swim coach Rob Phelan is the Shelton-Mason County Journal's All-County Girls Coach of the Year.

The Shelton girls swim team placed ninth at the state meet, the highest ever finish in school history.

"It's great. It's a testament to how good the kids have been doing," Phelan told the Journal. "We've been really lucky with the kids doing so well, the boys and girls. The girls getting top 10 at state last year, that was really awesome."

Phelan swam at Sumner High School before swimming in college at Central Washington University, where he met co-coach Chad Youngquist. He began his coaching career in Shelton in 1991 and has been a co-coach with Youngquist since 1999. Including his time coaching while in college and with club teams in the Seattle area prior to moving to Shelton, he's been coaching swimming more than 40 years.

Phelan was an art teacher at Shelton and recently retired. He was an assistant with both the boys and girls swim team when he first started at Shelton.

After he was done teaching art, Phelan said coaching swimming was a great way to fill the rest of his day.

"Working with 20, 30 kids who all want to be there and are really committed trying to improve and challenge themselves, it's been a real blessing to be able to have that opportunity at the end of the day with the swimmers," Phelan said. "It gives you a whole different change so it allowed me not to take what I was doing in the art room home too much. There was always a break and then I was at the pool two or three hours coaching. By the time I left the pool with a great group of kids, by the time I got home, there was not a lot of overlap so that was a nice transition from teaching to coaching and then home and so it worked out very well. Those were long days."

Phelan said he was a distance freestyle swimmer, but he doesn't swim anymore.

"It was something that I really enjoyed doing and that was something that was a big part of my life," Phelan said. "I miss it. I don't think you can have something in your life that takes up that much energy and time and not miss it. Time goes on and I find exercise other places."

Heading into the 2022 season for the girls swim team, Phelan said the expectations were trying to have as many girls as possible qualify for the state meet and do well. Those expectations were met.

The core group of juniors of Madeline Allred, Lelia Ollenburg, Abbi Sachs and Kaylin Mutoli each qualified for the state meet in a relay. Allred, Mutoli and Ollenburg each qualified for state in an individual event as well.

"They're all pretty versatile, swimming-wise in the events and so that allows them to do the medley relays quite well," Phelan said. "Sometimes it's hard if you only have four or five outstanding swimmers, it's hard to make sure that you have four good swimmers for each of the strokes. With those four, they fit into that category. Each one of them could fill in and they could swap out and do other events within that medley relay so that was a key component and why we stayed with the medley relay as a key focus for us."

Madeline Smith and Fiona Dowling also made contributions to Shelton's success.

Phelan said he knew after the core group's sophomore season how good the team was and could be.

In a sport that is not traditionally a team sport, the team spent a lot of time together with the club team but also outside of the pool, which created a strong foundation for the team. Phelan said it's been great to go to swim practice and be with people who enjoy swimming.

"It makes it so much easier. It's just enjoyable to go," Phelan said. "You just want to go and I think their desire to do stuff and work hard and learn and get better, it just fuels what I like about it. And then you just want to go and it's a Catch-22 where everyone is there for the same reason because it builds off one another. Myself and Coach Youngquist build upon what the swimmers are doing a lot and then we get excited and that transpires to the swimmers themselves too and it kind of bounces back and forth."

Allred was the highest finisher for the Highclimbers at the state 2A girls swim meet, placing fifth in the 50-yard freestyle. The 200-yard and 400-yard freestyle relay team of Ollenburg, Allred, Mutoli and Sachs finished seventh.

Mutoli placed 15th in the 100-yard backstroke and 16th in the 200-yard freestyle. Ollenburg placed ninth in the 100-yard butterfly and 13th in the 200-yard individual medley.

The 2023 girls swim season begins next month and the first meet is scheduled for September. Pandora Ward will be rejoining the team this year after not swimming last year. Phelan said there are a number of swimmers preparing for the season on their own.

"It will be exciting and I was hoping that we can step up and continue having goals bigger than what we've done in the past and see if we can strive to get to those goals," Phelan said. "That's going to be the start. Right from Day 1, it's trying to figure out where we want to be at the end and setting those goals and working towards those. It should be a fun experience doing something new in a position where we have not been in the past."

Phelan said it's been rewarding to work with Youngquist for more than 20 years.

"Chad's a great coach and he is easy to work with and he makes it very easy," Phelan said. "We don't really talk, we talk about what's going on in the season for what our goals are within the season, what we need to accomplish. Jobs-wise, I do certain jobs, he does certain jobs, we don't really have to discuss it, things just get done. It makes it really easy since we've been coaching together for 24 years and in college, we swam together so I've known Chad for a long time."

Phelan said the two have the same goal so they are able to step in and go and it makes things easy for both of them.

"We both swam for the same coaches so it's just confidence in knowing what's going to happen, there's no questioning of how things are going to go," Youngquist said. "We don't have to have meetings about what's going to happen this week or season planning or anything like that. The stress of the job is way less because you just know how it's going to go and I'm not going to say it's easy but it sure is easier to work with somebody who is on the same page every single day without even having a conversation. That is a blessing for anybody to have that kind of working relationship with somebody so that's huge."

Having coached for more than 40 years, Phelan certainly loves coaching swimming.

"I coached when I was in college, I coached age group teams and summer teams in college. Once I got out of college, I coached club swimming for a number of years and some high school and then I came here and started coaching here so it's been about 40 years," Phelan said. "I fell in love with the Shelton area. It's an awesome place, lots of opportunities to do different things and it's a beautiful place to be. The high school has treated me well and it's been a good situation and with Chad, makes it just really enjoyable to work with. It's been a great deal."

Phelan said it is possible he will retire from coaching in the future, but he is enjoying it for now as a good transition from working full time to part time to make the transition to full retirement.

He enjoys being in Shelton and Mason County.

"It's a good, fun group of kids and coaching has been great," Phelan said. "There were some challenges in there but with Chad and things like that, things have leveled out and smooth making the transition, I was doing both girls and boys for a number of years without an assistant so that was challenging for a while. When Chad came in, we were able to split up jobs and work together. It's not even really like it's work. You go in there, you get to be with a group of people that you really enjoy, a bunch of kids and they all love to move forward in a sport that is a great thing, coaching swimming has not been work."