David Marsh, 2013 Charlotte Ultraswim Breakdown

Swim Coach David Marsh breaks down the 2013 Charlotte Ultraswim, highlighting some of the races you’ll want to watch.

You can follow David Marsh on Twitter here. 

David Marsh bio via SwimMAC:

Coach David Marsh knew there had to be a better way for children to join the world of competitive swimming after enrolling his three children into a junior swim team.
 
Marsh had plenty of experience with getting fast swimmers to go faster having been a two-time Olympic coach, seven-time National Team Coach, nine-time NCAA National Coach of the Year and a 13-time SEC Coach of the Year, but he was intrigued by the way youth swimmers were introduced to the sport.
 
When one of Marsh’s former student-athletes, Rowdy Gaines, was introducing his daughter to swimming, she was asked to do a set with no explanation or training. To Marsh, this just didn’t seem like the correct way to introduce a child to swimming. This experience started Marsh’s to re-think how youth swimming programs were organized.
 
The opportunity to shape the way youth swimming happens came to Marsh in 2007 when SwimMAC Carolina invited him to be the program’s CEO and Director of Coaching.
 
Marsh accepted the role and left an incredibly successful 17-year career at Auburn University. For SwimMAC, they were getting a world-class coach and for Marsh, he was able to do two things, create a system that develops fast swimmers and good people, and start a center of excellence for elite athletes.

While at Auburn, Marsh’s swimmers excelled at the national and international levels of competition athletically, and most importantly, in the classroom. According to Marsh, success in the pool is success out of the pool.

In the pool, accomplishments included numerous NCAA Team Championships, seven men’s (1997, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007) and five women’s (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007). It is an unprecedented achievement that four of these Men’s and Women’s NCAA Championships were earned in the same season. His teams took home a combined 1,312 All-America honors by 276 athletes, along with 45 NCAA individual titles and 30 NCAA relay crowns.

At the conference level his athletes won 17 consecutive SEC Team titles, 13 men’s (10 of these consecutive) and 4 women’s. His coaching prowess produced 178 SEC individual titles and 52 relay conference victories. Internationally 52 Auburn athletes have won medals in 90 events including 27 during the summer of 2003. While at AU, Marsh developed 22 Olympians who won seven medals.

Out of the pool, 200+ swimmers were chosen to the SEC Academic Honor Roll and 45 were named Academic All-Americans. In addition, 25 combined men and women’s teams have been named CSCAA Academic All-American. He also coached four Leah Rawls Atkins and eight Cliff Hare Award winners. These awards are the highest awards an Auburn student-athlete can receive.

It is obvious that Marsh’s coaching philosophy encourages athletes to give an honest and complete effort to reach their God-given potential in their sport and in their studies. He believes in establishing patterns of success not only at the top levels of swimming, but also as a professional, a family member and a quality citizen.

Prior to becoming the head coach at Auburn, Marsh helmed Dynamo Swim Club in Atlanta, Ga., and Las Vegas Gold Swim Team in Las Vegas, Neva.

At SwimMAC, it is important to Marsh, and the entire club, to develop leaders in life through excellence in swimming. That thought has become the motto of the club. The motto and vision are worked through using Marsh’s ‘pyramid’ organizational structure and group coaching philosophy. 

One of the more prominent changes Marsh brought to SwimMAC was the addition of Team Elite. This program focuses solely on the unique training and professional needs of post collegiate athletes, as well as selected high school and college athletes, preparing to achieve national and international swimming success. Statistics tell us that the majority of Olympians come from programs with Olympians.

The mission of SwimMAC Carolina’s Team Elite is to assist the United States Olympic Committee and USA Swimming to maintain its position as the world’s preeminent swimming power at international and Olympic competitions. 

With the addition of Team Elite, a group that produced three Gold Medals in the 2008 Olympics, the younger swimmers of SwimMAC can visualize what success looks like and are given numerous opportunities to work and train with the elite athletes.

The mission of Team Elite came full circle in 2012 as SwimMAC placed five swimmers on the 2012 USA Olymic Swim Team. Making the team were Cullen Jones, Davis Tarwater, Micah Lawrence, Kara Lynn Joyce and Nick Thoman. The group brought home six medals, three gold and three silver.

Before even making the Olympic team, SwimMAC was represented by the nations largest group of Olympic Trials qualifiers.

Having coached over 30 Olympic athletes, been a National Team Coach seven times, and led the US in numerous international meets, Marsh has firmly cemented SwimMAC Carolina as arguably one of the best clubs in the entire country.

Marsh was a five-time All-American backstroker at Auburn and the 1980 SEC backstroke champion, ranked sixth in the world at the time. He earned a degree in business administration in 1981 and he remained at Auburn as an assistant coach until 1985 when he left for Dynamo.

A native of Miami, Florida, Marsh is a member of Omicron Delta Kappa Honorary Society and the “Tiger Trail” of Auburn. He has also been inducted into the Southwest High School and Indian River Community College Halls of Fame and serves on the boards of the American Swimming Coaches Association of America as well as the Championship Performance Advisory Board. He is a highly regarded speaker, having delivered addresses at both local and national events, including the ASCA national convention. He has also authored articles for publications such as Swimming Technique and has provided commentary on a series of swimming technique videos.

Marsh is married to the former Kristin Burke who was a swimmer at California-Berkeley. She earned her masters degree in English Education at Auburn in March of 1995. Marsh and Kristin have three children aged 17, 14 and 12.