By Katherine Mueller
Staff Writer
This school year, Costa teacher Marilyn Carey will not only sign in for her first year of Costa’s Math Department, but she will also be making a splash as a brand new coach for the Costa girls swim team.
Carey has been coaching swim for 10 years. She began coaching kids when she was 17 years old, and after graduating from UC Davis, she decided to move back to Los Angeles from Northern California and continue her coaching career. Now, she works at Costa, teaching Algebra 1 and Geometry as she awaits the spring swim season.
“After I graduated, I tried doing corporate life; it didn’t work out for me,” Carey said. “I love being outside; I didn’t want to be in an office.”
She began officially teaching high school swim at Los Alamitos High School, and three years later, switched over to Costa. While at Los Alamitos, she observed the competitive, yet supporting nature present in the girls team, further inspiring her to pursue teaching the importance of friendship and encouragement in a team, according to Carey.
“I would say swimming is an individual sport typically, so if you’re a club swimmer […] you’re kind of always thinking selfishly a little bit,” Carey said. “My goal as a coach is to get people used to contributing to a team […] that’s what it was like over there, and that’s what I’m hoping it’ll be like here, too.”
Carey’s main goal for this year is to implement the importance of teamwork within the swim team. According to Carey, swimming carries a very competitive nature, and she hopes to make those on the swim team enjoy being teammates, rather than solely competitors.
“Teamwork makes the dream work, which is ironic, given the social distancing guidelines, but in general that’s my philosophy,“ Carey said. “I swam in college, and it was really apparent that ‘yeah we’re competing against each other, but I wanna be faster than you, so I can get my spot on the travel team,’ so it kind of has the nature of people not really being teammates.”
With rather unclear information in regards to a possible vaccine or cure for COVID-19, the spring swim season will likely proceed much differently than before. Carey and the swim program are currently developing a CDC-compliant plan for tryouts but are unsure if and how competitions will carry out.
“[The swim program] has figured out a way to practice, so that’s what we’re trying to do once we do the tryouts,” Carey said. “Hopefully [after tryouts], we’ll have the more concrete idea of how many people we have on the team, and we’ll break it into practice times where [team members and coaches] are in [separate assigned] pods.”
Carey will join the ranks of the seven other swim coaches at Costa, working under the leadership of English and Special Education teacher and head coach Dave Halushka. Though she doesn’t know what the future will hold regarding COVID-19, Carey explains that she can’t wait to get to know the team.
“I’m excited for the year’s team,” Carey said. “Coaching at Los Alamitos was fun […] Having that teamwork attitude was what it was like over there, and that’s what I’m hoping it’ll be like here too.”
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