Pursley Pep Talks: The Real Value In What We Do

Pursley Pep Talks are a collection of coaching perspectives written by Alabama head swimming coach Dennis Pursley. This is the 24th installment of a series that will be rolled out throughout the coming months.

Pursley Pep Talks: The Real Value In What We Do

The Olympic year always brings many new challenges and opportunities to the national team program and its athletes. It will offer an opportunity to be a part of the biggest, most exciting media event in sport, and for some, to acquire fame and fortune in the process. One of our greatest challenges will be to ensure that these extraordinary opportunities enhance rather than undermine our higher mission.

The Olympic Games also provides unique opportunities to represent your country with integrity, heroic determination and honor. It provides a platform to promote your sport and influence the youth of your nation by personifying its values and attributes. It challenges us to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the team effort. These are the opportunities that, if taken advantage of, will contribute to the personal growth of character that is more fulfilling and of far greater significance than material reward and recognition.

The responsibility of the Olympian to contribute to the best of his or her ability to the success of this mission is of greater importance than any of our personal agendas. In the final analysis, these are the criteria by which we will be judged when it is all said and done.

About Dennis Pursley

After getting his start as a volunteer coach on Don Gambril’s first Alabama staff, current Alabama head coach Dennis Pursley has gone on to one of the most extraordinary careers in the sport of swimming, a career that led him to be named one of the 25 most influential people in the history of USA Swimming in 2003.

Pursley has helmed coaching staffs throughout the world, including stops as the first head coach of the Australian Institute of Sport, the inaugural director of the United States National Team and most recently the head coach of Great Britain’s 2012 Olympic squad. Pursley returned to the deck in 2003 as the head coach of the Brophy East Swim Team in Phoenix Ariz., before becoming the head coach of British Swimming in 2008.

Pursley and his wife Mary Jo have five children, Lisa, Brian, David, Steven and J.J. Lisa and David have joined him on the Alabama staff.

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