EMERALD AQUATICS: SWIM FOR LIFE

Why swim with Emerald Aquatics?

For kids just learning to swim, maybe it’s the fun—relay races and playing Connect 4 at the bottom of the pool.

For teenage athletes focused on getting faster, maybe it’s the lake swims or the balance coaches strike between pushing the team and meeting each swimmer where they are.

For adults ranging in age from their 30s to 80 years old, maybe it’s the glow of lifelong fitness and camaraderie—urging each other on through 90-minute workouts, then laughing about it at weekend socials.

Coach Jennifer Thompson says it’s all of these things, and something else. “Swimming is a sport for life,” she says. “Especially for the kids, we’re developing the whole person, not just the swimmer. We’re talking about positive attributes—courage, work ethic, sportsmanship, integrity—and we ask the kids to find concrete examples of them in each other.”

Coach Emily Puleio (left, with Thompson), who swam Division I in college and also coaches the University of Oregon team, adds, “With so much expected of youth—they’ve got siblings, school, home life, relationships, jobs—my priority is having a place that feels safe, where they can work through those things. We’re making sure the whole human is considered—not just the athlete.”

When Steve Johnson (below) and a small group of friends in Eugene started the team in 1995, they were just competitive swimmers—mostly UO faculty and graduate students—intent on extra training. But high school swimmers started showing up, seeking coaching, and Johnson agreed to do it, under one condition: there will be a proper youth team, he said, and a commitment to serving kids from underrepresented areas.

Today Emerald Aquatics is a nationally sanctioned nonprofit swim team with certified coaches for all ages. Kids 5 to 17 years old are supported with nine group levels and the adult program serves both novice swimmers seeking to stay fit and former collegiate standouts and other competitors who want to keep their edge. Emerald Aquatics competes at events year-round while coordinating with school schedules to ensure youth swimmers don’t have to pick between their school team and the club. And in keeping with Johnson’s original intent, team scholarships help families of limited income manage membership costs.

Emerald Aquatics youth swimmers have succeeded at every level of high school competition, including sectional, regional, and national championships, and have gone on to college teams in Division I, II, and III.

But just as important to the coaches is how youth swimmers perform out of the water. It goes well beyond the expectation of good pool behavior and zero tolerance for bullying or harassment.

“We’re darned near as concerned with how the kids are doing in school and in life as we are with how they’re swimming,” Johnson says. “We’ve had kids who have had problems and we’ve said, ‘you’ve got to work on that problem, it’s more important than swimming.’ We want kids to have full lives and to develop as much skill as they can in everything.”

Coaches help youth swimmers develop life skills through the practice of “spotlighting.” At the start of the week an aspirational quality is placed in the spotlight—positive attitude, for example—and the swimmers must identify examples during the week’s workouts—say, a teammate cheering another on through a demanding series of freestyle sprint repeats.

Lily Hughes, 17, (below left with sister, Ella) says her favorite spotlight quality is “warrior,” which the youth team chose recently for a week of workouts that promised to be especially grueling. By the end of the week, Hughes was exhausted—and exhilarated. “It showed us that we could push ourselves really far,” says Hughes. “I felt like I could accomplish a lot more as a person, just being able to see that I could push myself further.”

Hughes, who has type 1 diabetes, says coaches push the team while accommodating each swimmer’s individual needs, which can include extra rest breaks or customized workouts while these swimmers build the strength and endurance to match their lane mates. “I like how inclusive the coaches are,” Lily says. “They change their set to work with you and the needs you have. You feel included in the group.”

Her sister, Ella, 14, is particularly fond of the lake swims.

Emerald Aquatics meets all safety regulations required by USA Swimming for lake swims and is the only Eugene-area team offering these demanding-but-popular workouts, which are held weekly at Cottage Grove Lake over spring and summer. Lake swims are the youths’ “favorite thing,” Johnson says. “It’s great conditioning. Nothing seems long in a pool after training in a lake.”

Says Ella Hughes: “I just like being out in the lake, in nature—you’re not confined in the pool. It’s a tough environment, it’s cold”—she smiled—“you get to suffer with everybody.”

That sense of camaraderie also draws adults to the masters program, which includes varied 90-minute workouts for anyone 18 or older under the eye of a coach who provides technique work for all abilities. Masters swimmers include swim parents, former collegiate swimmers, triathletes, and other adults who simply want to stay in shape. Many of them swim at organized events and competitions and a reduced rate is available to college students.

Eric Brown, 40, a lifelong swimmer, finds the masters workouts demanding but satisfying, thanks to the group dynamic. “It’s just so hard to motivate when you’re swimming on your own,” says Brown, who recently met a goal of swimming 500 kilometers—more than 300 miles—in a single year. “In a group of teammates, it’s a lot easier to push yourself. It’s the group that’s pushing you and the workout that’s pushing you. You’d be surprised how far you can swim when you’re swimming with a team.”

Friendships forged through “group suffering” can lead to antics. Brown and a fellow Emerald Aquatics masters swimmer are notorious for plunging into the water just in front of a lane mate coming to the wall; they have dubbed these cannonballs—which started during the pandemic—“coronaballs.”

“Keeps your lane mates on their toes,” Brown said, smiling. “[Emerald Aquatics] is about really pushing yourself and having fun.”

For Lynda Christiansen (below holding wall), it’s also about lifelong fitness.

Christiansen made a lifestyle change in her 40s: she quit smoking and took up swimming. A Vermont resident, she joined a masters swim team and quickly grew to love both the workouts and the friendships. After moving to Eugene in the 1990s, she connected with Emerald Aquatics and has been a thrice weekly swimmer with the team ever since.

A retired nurse, Christiansen values swimming as a whole-body workout that’s easy on the joints. She’s made “dear friends” through Emerald Aquatics, she says, and she appreciates the variety of the workouts—the mix of technique drills and tough sets keeps things interesting.

Christiansen turned 80 recently, a milestone the team celebrated with a surprise birthday cupcake and candle delivered poolside as she swam up to the wall. She attributes her good health in part to genes and diet, but she says swimming is the foundation.

“I’m so glad I found swimming,” Christiansen says. “I can’t believe I’m 80. It doesn’t feel that old.”

Email coach Emily Puleio at easwimcoach@gmail.com for more information.

/osea/UserFiles/Image/QuickUpload/ea-story-draft-sj-jt-ep-th-mc-rhd-mc_013094.pdf