Former NCAA, United States, and International Swimming League coach Jonty Skinner is now coaching youth soccer, he told SwimSwam.
Skinner is coaching the Academy girls group at Tuscaloosa United Soccer Club, consisting of around 33 players ages 7-10. He also coaches a 15 & under girls competitive team.
“I coached soccer for nine years back in the early 2000’s so went back to working with that sport because I love the challenge of teaching the tactical side of the game,” Skinner, 67, said in an email. “Swimming is a very linear sport, while soccer has a quantum element to it and requires a ton more to be effective. It’s quite a challenge to develop the younger players, but I’ve developed some brain training-based concepts that are showing a lot of promise.”
Skinner’s daughter Cydney played collegiate soccer at the University of Nebraska Omaha from 2015-2018.
Jonty Skinner. (Credit: Indiana Athletics)
Skinner said he retired from swim coaching midway through of the 2019-20 NCAA season, when he was associate head coach at Indiana University. At the time, he said he had planned to retire after the 2018-19 season, but that Ray Looze recruited him after the program lost three of its assistants.
Skinner went on to serve as the head coach of the International Swimming League’s Cali Condors for the 2020 season, which they won (he was filling in for Jeff Julian, who was undergoing cancer treatment and is back with the team for the upcoming season).
Prior to Indiana, he was senior associate head coach at Alabama. Skinner joined the school as an assistant coach after graduating in 1977, returned as associate head coach and then head coach in the late ’80s, and held his last position there for seven years.
After his first stint with the Tide, Skinner coached the San Jose Aquatics Club to a USA Senior National team championship and five USA Junior National team titles. He was chosen as the inaugural coach of USA Swimming’s Resident National Team in 1994, then spent the next eight years as USA Swimming’s director of performance science and technology. From 2009-2012, he worked in a similar capacity for British Swimming.
As a swimmer, the South Africa native Skinner held the 100 free world record from 1976-1981 and was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1985.
Skinner said he does not plan to return to swim coaching, at least on deck, in the future. He has a swimming consulting job with a national federation in Asia and said he’s also “in the process of talking with another federation in Europe.”
“However, all my coaching and coaching creativity is on a soccer field and not on a pool deck,” Skinner added.
what in the ted lasso
“Ray Looze recruited him after the program lost three of its assistants.”
Whoa I wonder if there’s a story there!
2 of the assistants took D1 head coaching jobs.
The other one, in his words, moved because his wife got a great job elsewhere (bottom of the totem pole D1 assistant coaching jobs aren’t as great as you might think).
So, there were 3 stories there, but none were paticularly nefarious.
I remember watching this on the ABC Wide World of Sports broadcast. They broke from ice barrel jumping, or something of that sort, to show it. 45 years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday. Congrats Jonty!
1975-76 was an insane time for the men’s 100 free. Jim Montgomery broke Spitz WR. 12 days later, Andy Coan at 17 broke that in some random regional meet unshaved. Then the Montgomery/Skinner/Coan rivalry took shape. Dropped the WR by almost 2 seconds in 2 years. It took another 5 years til Rowdy broke it.
A great synopsis – Thank you
I’d be curious to see what these “brain training-based concepts” are that he uses to teach soccer tactics to 7-10 year olds
i talked with Jonty about this maybe ten years ago and I probably don’t have it all right, but part of it involves the use of video to make decisions about what to do with the ball once you receive a pass – dribble, pass back, pass forward, shoot – and the computer repetitions/simulations allow your brain to “practice” 1,000 times in a week compared to maybe only a hundred in live practice. Similar to quarterbacks watching film and having to make decisions about where to go with the ball pre-snap or depending on what they see a certain defender do – run, pass to which receiver, hand the ball off – so, you’re able to teach the brain systems… Read more »
Jonty’s fabulous world record 100 swim from 1976: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ig4dJiVNxVs
That was awesome! 3.5 feet deep, no goggles, no super suits. Thanks for posting that! Imagine what these guys could do now with the pools, equipment, and training that is available!
I’d imagine about 46.9/47.0 if they were in their prime today….
Looking at that race now, it’s really striking how skinny they all were. And Skinner looked as if he were swimming with a two beat kick, which is inconceivable for sprinters today. No weight training, no underwater dolphin, no goggles, no tech suits….
Thank you. Just watched it. Absolutely unreal how odd it looks to see guys without hats amd goggles diving in to have a paddle prior to the start.
He went 49.3 in a brief without goggles off the tiniest blick ever with no underwaters in a pool 3-4 foot deep.
His stroke is beautiful with a very high turnover. Came back in 25 low.
Beautiful swim. Announcers absolutely clueless. Makes me yearn for Rowdy.
LOL
What a fantastic video. I have so many observations.
- I read these comments first, so I didn’t expect to see anyone wearing goggles. But did NOT expect guys to have caps! Assumed goggles would’ve come first.
- I was skipping through the beginning of the video just to get to the race, but as I was I saw that they just….let dudes take some warm-up starts? Right before the race?
- The “take your mark” command felt like it was minutes before the gun! Guessing there was some rule about not being able to have your toes over the edge / grab the block before that command?
- One of the announcers sort of sounds like Jim Henson /
… Read more »You were allowed 1 false start. You were dq’d on the second one. You also walked up to the edge of the block from the rear of it. Lots of people took a false start to get used to the water. Very common.
I mean, he swam more than half a second faster than the previous WR. Legendary.
What a great move on Jonty’s part. Like most or all coaches of swimming,, he has been “rode hard and put up wet”. He is a great guy and pretty adept at soccer himself! Best wishes to a cool dude!!!
Best wishes to the Jonty! He’s not only a great man, but a fantastic coach and role model, regardless of the sport.
Outstanding! Tuscaloosa United is very fortunate to have Coach Skinner coaching for them!