Boys swimming coach of the year

By Ted Allen

Published: May 3, 2008

Jefferson Forest second-year swim coach Jann Brown never swam in high school. Her school in Pennsylvania only had a boys team, but she went on to Penn State where she enjoyed a career in synchronized swimming.

Now, as coach of the Cavaliers’ boys and girls teams, Brown does much more than synchronize stopwatches. She manages a team of 40 swimmers, placing them in their fastest individual events and finding the relay combinations that work best.

“I’d like to think they all had a good time competing for their high school and I was able to showcase their talents to the best of my ability,” said Brown, The News & Advance all-area boys coach of the year who guided JF to a seventh-place finish at the Group AA state meet. “To have them as a team be successful, and place as high as they could … I really was pleased with how the whole season came out. It was very exciting to see all three boys relays come back for the finals.”

Brown coached both the boys and girls all-area swimmers of the year — Travis Stauder and Susanna White, respectively — though Lynchburg’s YMCA program and coach T.J. Liston had much more to do with their success than Brown.

“A lot of these kids who have been swimming for a long time are very good, self-motivated individuals,” she said. “(And) the older seniors and juniors are as motivating to the younger swimmers. They are really a driven bunch of kids.”

Brown now swims competitively, as a member of Lynchburg’s U.S. Masters swim team for the past 10 years. She has been involved in the Lynchburg Aquatic League for the past 12 — volunteering with her daughter Jennifer’s teams before coaching the Peakland Otters the past three summers.

She has encouraged her team members to try out for JF rival E.C. Glass, which is where most of Peakland’s swimmers go.

“I just kind of recruit for the sake of the sport,” said Brown, who took over the Peakland program from Priscilla Bettis, her masters swim coach.

“She and Donna Hodgert have taught me everything I know,” said Brown, who coached under Hodgert at Randolph College for a couple of winters before taking the helm at Forest last year.

She said the JF job was a natural transition for her.

“Because I’d been in the LAL for 10 years at that point, I knew so many of the parents and I already knew at least 90 percent of the swimmers, and their strengths or weaknesses,” Brown said.

She said she couldn’t be as efficient a coach as she is without the help of the parents, who help with everything from timing to sending out scores by computer.

“Swimming’s one of the most involved sports on the parent or volunteer front,” Brown said. “That made it easier to step into the position at JF because I knew how many parents were involved in it — for judging, refereeing, starting. Before I coached, I did that as well. That made that part a breeze.”