John Fedena Takes Over as Head Coach at Delaware Swim Team

The Delaware Swim Team in Wilmington, Delaware has hired John Fedena as its new program director and head coach. This brings him back home after spending 4 years as the head age group coach at Asphalt Green in New York City.

Fedena is a native of New Castle, Delaware, and in college was a four-year member of the varsity program at the University of Delaware.

Prior to his time at Asphalt Green, he was the head coach of the YMCA of Northwest Carolina and 5 years as a division lead coach at SwimMAC Carolina – consistently one of the top-rated clubs in USA Swimming’s Club Excellence program.

Fedena has also had stops at the Cypress Fairbanks Swim Club and Klein Aquatics in Houston, and collegiately at the University of Washington, New Mexico State (where he was head coach), and the University of Georgia.

Fedena has served on the North Carolina Local Swimming Community Board of Directors and the USA Swimming Southern Zone Board as age group chair. He was nominated as a finalist for 2016 Age Group Coach of the Year by the American Swimming Coaches Association and North Carolina Swimming.

This will be his second stop with the Delaware Swim Team: from 1996 through 1999, he worked with his hometown club as a lead coach, which was his first professional coaching job.

Fedena officially began on deck in Delaware earlier this week. The previous program director was University of Delaware head coach Pablo Marmalejo.

The Delaware Swim Team was a silver medal club in the 2019 Club Excellence program, but fell off that list in 2020 and 2021. The program has been home to a number of nationally-known swimmers, including Olympic gold medalist Cierra Runge, National High School Record breaker Kaitlyn Jones, NCAA Champion Nicole Vernon, former USC team captain Lily Dubroff, U.S. Olympian Andrew Gemmell, and National Age Group Record breaker Tanner Kurz.