Never A Dull Workout With Coach Bryan Craig In Australia

Bryan Craig
Photo Courtesy: Bryan Craig

By Jeff Commings, Swimming World senior writer

Bryan Craig never does things the ordinary way.

Stop by any of his training sessions with the GT Shamrocks team in Albury, Australia, and you’ll likely see his swimmers doing something slightly unusual. Because the pool doesn’t have starting blocks, the swimmers dive backwards over lane ropes to practice backstroke starts. On another day, they might be doing kick sets while holding specially-made PVC pipes that slowly fill with water to make the set more difficult.

Because the team only has a 25-meter pool, Craig had to get very inventive in order to prepare his athletes for long course racing. His favorite thing is attaching them to bungee cords while swimming the same number of strokes they might if they were in a long course pool.

Craig’s innovative approach to coaching has gotten him far in the sport. He’s now 34 years old and running a team that he started on his own. When he was 21, he became the youngest coach to earn the Level 5 certification from the American Swim Coaches Association as a result of working with talented swimmers around the world.

It all started in the United States in 1999 while working with Bob Gillett, one of the biggest innovators in the coaching ranks. When Craig arrived at the Arizona Desert Fox swim team in Phoenix as an 18-year-old coaching newbie from Belfast, Northern Ireland, Gillett was world-famous for his work with Misty Hyman. Through her work with Gillett, Hyman had revolutionized the underwater dolphin kick for butterfly and would go on to win gold in the 200 fly at the 2000 Olympics.

“Bob’s a genius, and he showed me so many ways that we can work simulation (for long course) with these kids,” Craig said. “A lot of the things Bob taught me are coming into play with my team now.”

Craig was part of an internship program that Gillett ran for young coaches through the American Swim Coaches Association, a year-long stint in Arizona that showed coaches all angles of the job. Gillett said Craig was a very quick learner and had the tools needed to run a swim club on his own.

“I thought he would do very well,” Gillett said. “He just had to find the right environment that fit his personality.”

That’s what Craig found in Albury seven years ago. The small town is just 200 miles southwest of Canberra in the state of Victoria, right on the border with New South Wales. He’s been Down Under long enough for an Australian accent to find its way into his speech – though some words bring back the thick Irish brogue. He’s married with a 1-year-old daughter, and is slowly building his team into a major force in the area.

Bryan Craig with daughter

Photo Courtesy: Bryan Craig

When he started the club, Craig had just three swimmers on his roster. This year, 100 swimmers count themselves as members. Last year, his swimmers were second to the much larger local team at a meet by just two points.

Next year, the team could be represented on the world stage if Matthew Ward is a part of Australia’s Paralympic team. Ward is a top-notch breaststroker who could win a few medals, but it depends on the classification he’s assigned for competition. Craig said Ward is currently in the SB9 category, but might be moved to the much tougher SB10 division.

“With my disability, swimming was really the only sport I could do,” Ward said. “I wanted to swim only for exercise, but Bryan saw something more. He was very careful and innovative with the ways he would coach me. At present we’re still knocking time off my (personal bests), and I owe much of my success from Australian records to national golds to Bryan. We’re still hoping to take it one step further into the Paralympics.”

Matthew Ward and Bryan Craig

Photo Courtesy: Matthew Ward

To have Ward qualify for the Paralympic team would be a major boon for swimming in the area, Craig said. He added that he hopes to join Ward in Rio as a coach, getting him closer to his own career goals.

Craig grew up in war-torn Belfast when the Protestants and Catholics were fighting to keep Northern Ireland as a part of the United Kingdom or to join independent Ireland. Craig remembers riots and shootings taking place at the pool where he trained as a kid, with a burning car just outside the facility doors.

Swimming was pretty much the only sport Craig felt he could participate in during the Troubles. It was the only sport that was not classified as a Protestants-only or Catholics-only sport. His parents started a swim club in Belfast that was open to anyone, regardless of religious background, and it prospered despite the conflict outside.

“It was otherworldly to grow up in Belfast with all of this happening,” Craig said. “At Irish nationals in Belfast, there was a decent police force presence whenever the guys from the south of Ireland would come to the north, and there would quite frequently be shooting outside.”

Craig knew by the time he was 18 that he wanted to be a swim coach, and that dream couldn’t be realized at the time in Belfast. When he answered the online advertisement for new coaches to spend a year with Gillett in Arizona, Craig was on his way to starting his coaching career.

When Craig’s visa expired, he returned to Belfast, but not for long. He crossed the Atlantic again for a job in Canada working to merge two swim programs in Ottawa. His task was to turn the team around and be competitive in the Ontario province, which he managed to do in his four-and-a-half years there. By the time he left in 2005, the team was ranked third among clubs in Ontario.

Craig returned to the United Kingdom for more coaching work in Dover and York. In 2008, the opportunity of a lifetime seemed to present itself when the head of the Philippines swimming federation asked Craig to be the head coach for the squad participating in the world short course championships in Manchester. The plan was to segue into a position as the head coach at the Philippines International Training Center, but the economy was hitting bottom at the time, and the center closed.

Though he could have had any coaching job he wanted in the United Kingdom, Craig felt a calling to be somewhere else.

“I started getting itchy feet because I wanted to see the world,” he said, and that’s what led him to Australia.

The job of a lifetime in Australia has its setbacks. Craig said “it broke my father’s heart (to move to Australia), but everywhere I went it seemed to break Dad’s heart because I was so far away.”

Ward’s long-term plans include putting a swimmer on the Australian national team, and getting himself selected to the national coaching staff. Those two accomplishments, he said, could help attract more youngsters in the area to swimming. If they happen to join his team, that’s even better.

“In this area, specifically, swimming needs to be rescued,” he said. “We lose 10-year-olds to football and hockey. By 2020, I’d like for the football clubs to say, ‘We’ve got difficulties because we’re losing kids to swimming.’”

Bryan Craig and GT Shamrocks

Photo Courtesy: Bryan Craig

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Bryan Craig
8 years ago

Thanks for this guys I feel humbled by this!

davy campbell
8 years ago
Reply to  Bryan Craig

Bryan from the first time we met has always shown a determination to excel at his chosen sport, He gives of his time in huge measures, on his last visit home he took a couple of sessions at our club, the swimmers still ask about him, when is he coming back.
My wish for Bryan is contunied success in all he does, and look forward to his next visit.
Davy Campbell
Sec Alliance Junior Swim Team.

Bryan
Bryan
8 years ago
Reply to  davy campbell

Davy, you and the team will always be close to my heart, look after yourself and my dad please.

I’ll be in as always when I come home.

Charlie Laws
Charlie Laws
8 years ago

Great young man when we worked to-gether training a English Channel swimmer, who swam under 10 hours.

Matt Ward
Matt Ward
8 years ago

Thankyou, and a big congratulations to Bryan! He’s worked very hard with his coaching and is well deserving of all he’s achieved 🙂

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