Cleveland Draws From Olympic Experience in Coaching

By Emily Sampl

BOULDER, Colorado, January 19. IT'S not uncommon for great athletes to eventually coach in the sport in which they excelled, but rarely does the coach benefit as much as the athletes. For Jon Cleveland, coaching has helped him and the high school team he coaches improve – Cleveland writes the workouts, swims them, then gives the sets to his team.

"It's a real challenge right now," he said. "I'm kind of like a chef that tastes their own food. I use elements from everything I've learned in my national experience, and then I get in and test the sets to see if they're challenging enough."

The national experience that Cleveland draws from is certainly worth paying attention to. Cleveland, who has dual citizenship with the United States and Canada, competed at the 1988, 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games for Canada in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke. His highest individual finish came in 1988, when he placed seventh in the 200 in a time of 2:17.10. As for relays, Cleveland was lucky enough to be a member of Canada's bronze medal-winning 400 medley relay in Barcelona, which he calls his proudest swimming accomplishment.

Now living in Dallas, Cleveland competes for North Texas Masters and is among the top breaststrokers in his age group in the U.S. and Canada. He currently holds the Canadian Masters national records in the 100 and 200 SCM breast for the 30-34 age group, and is ranked first and second in the 50y and 100y breast (respectively) for men 35-39 in the 2007 USMS Top Ten rankings.

"I really like Masters swimming, and something that's cool about it is how many swimmers I see that I used to swim against from all over the world," he stated. "I see that they're still swimming and it's like, ‘I better get off my butt!'"

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