Mike Parratto (Regan Smith’s Coach) Watching Daughter Jessica Compete at Diving Trials, Not in Omaha Yet

Mike Parratto at the 2019 Golden Goggles -- 2020-olympic-swimming-trials

Mike Parratto, who coaches Regan Smith at the Riptide Swim Team in Minnesota, is not yet in Omaha. Instead, he is in Indianapolis watching his daughter, Jessica, compete at the U.S. Olympic diving trials. The younger Parratto, 26, dove at the University of Indiana and has qualified for her second Olympic team already. She and partner Delaney Schnell won the synchronized platform event to qualify for Tokyo. Jessica is also a finalist in the individual platform event, and she will compete in the final of that event Sunday evening.

Jessica was an Olympian in 2016, where she finished seventh in the synchro platform event and 10th in the individual platform event. The Parrattos are a well-established swimming and diving family since Mike has coached numerous national-level swimmers including four-time Olympian Jenny Thompson, and Jessica’s mother, Amy, was an all-American diver and now coaches swimming at Riptide.

With Mike not on deck in Omaha, Riptide program director Paul Smith (Regan’s father) is her primary on-deck coach, but Parratto will be coming to the meet after the diving trials conclude. Regan will compete in the 100 fly semifinals Sunday evening, and she will race in one of her signature events, the 100 back, beginning Monday. The 19-year-old won three gold medals at the 2019 World Championships but will be aiming to qualify for her first Olympic team.

Smith had been scheduled to enroll at Stanford in the fall of 2020, but she deferred her enrollment to stay with Parratto in Minnesota through the delayed Olympic year. Parratto has had a knack for predicting Smith’s breakthroughs in swimming. The day she broke the world record in the 200 back, Parratto said he had seen a massive time drop coming, perhaps even into the 2:03-range.

“She’s trained extremely well. Can I pinpoint a specific time? No. Did I think she was going to be in the area of these times? I did. She had a really great training year,” Parratto said in July 2019. “She has the ability, she has the focus, she has a really good background in training, and you put all those things together, you got to seem like that.”

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MK Mahoney

2 years ago

I coached with Mike in his early years, pre Jenny Thompson. You can not find a better Coach, father, husband, and person.