A 22-year-old Abby Walsh was thrown into the position of head coach of the Nonnewaug swim and dive team with no prior experience of coaching.
“It was right after I graduated college and came back home to work full-time,” Walsh said. “I think there was a misconception about being young and inexperienced. I was told that people thought my coaching style was going to be a cheerleader.”
Although Walsh is a valued friend on the swim team, she has no problem separating her understanding and funny personality from her coaching. Walsh does not allow any disrespect or slack from her athletes. Swimming requires endurance, speed, and drive. Swimmers are pushed outside of their limits, and need discipline to improve. Walsh knew how to whip the team into shape.
Experienced in coaching or not, Walsh was a swimmer, and she knows how to grind in the sport. In response to the harsh criticism received as a first-time coach, Walsh explains that “the tough practices and the team’s achievements proved that to be otherwise.”
Among the team’s recent accomplishments were a top-three finish at the Berkshire League championships and a second-place performance at the all-girls Splash meet in 2023.
“The little underdog team became an actual force to be reckoned with in our league to other schools’ shock, placing third at Berkshire League Championships (the previous highest was sixth),” Walsh said. “That achievement really bonded me to the team and my swimmers have been the reason I’ve continued.”
When discouraged, Walsh fights back. Walsh is the Nonnewaug’s swim team’s voice and fighter; she fights for her athletes, giving them support and motivation. Adding to the odds against Walsh for being a young female coach, she also is coaching a female-dominated team in the boys swim season. Nonnewaug swim is a co-ed swim team; as of 2024, it has four boys and 10 females, making it a small team. However, to Walsh and her athletes, that just means the team works harder to make the victories feel that much better and earned.
“Being a female-dominant team in a male-dominant league, I don’t let that discourage me,” Walsh said. “I want my girls to feel empowered – it’s such a good feeling when one of our girls beats a boy in a race or qualifies for a boy’s time.”
This goes for her style of coaching, too.
“I’ve noticed that female coaches get criticized for what I’ll call coaching passionately, but when a male coach acts that same way, it’s normal,” Walsh said.
For the Swimmers
Halfway through her first season as an assistant coach in 2021, the then-head coach stepped down and ultimately left Walsh to take the reins. As a head coach, Walsh turned brand-new, inexperienced swimmers, and turned them into state finalists who ended up placing and scoring many points for the team as a whole.
“As soon as I became head coach, one of our top swimmers decided to leave the team and I got Covid, so I was out for a week,” Walsh said. “As soon as I was able to come back, I wanted to fully dive into the position because I had a group of athletes who deserved the time and attention.”
Walsh arranged fundraisers, senior night, team suits, team jackets, practice lanes, teaching new swimmers how to swim, meet lineups, warmups, meets, and so much more without any help.
“She came into the team when Nonnewaug swim had nothing,” senior captain Olivia Bernardi said. “She changed the whole team around and ended up successful.”
The team’s success may stem from Walsh’s team-first attitude and desire to create an uplifting environment.
“At pasta parties and team breakfasts I love sitting with the team instead of the parents and talking to them outside of the pool setting,” Walsh said. “During our Berkshire League championships every year, I don’t go to the coaches’ lunch because I feel the swimmers’ energy and excitement and want to contribute to that.”
‘A Slight Perfectionist’
Walsh is organized — and some say a little crazy.
“I really love this sport and am a slight perfectionist, so I dedicate a lot of my time during the season to the team,” Walsh said.
Walsh is the type of coach who statistically and efficiently lays everything out and plans down to the millisecond of a swimmer’s time. She’s well coordinated and extremely smart. Walsh does all of the technically behind-the-scenes work alone as she doesn’t have an assistant coach to help.
“Practices typically have the same structure for all the swimmers, but I find it important to have different yardages and times for each lane/skill level,” Walsh said. “I try to split days between endurance, distance, sprint, and odd stroke. Once we get deeper into the season with less practices and more meets, I like to split lanes up by strokes to have even more personalized swim sets.”
Walsh also feels that her swimmers deserve confidence in practice and at meets.
“I’ve swam on club teams where there was one practice for everyone and once you missed the time on the first set there was no catching up,” Walsh said. “It was really discouraging, so I like to make realistic pace times per lane, and yardage that can actually be done in our allotted practice times.”
Thanks to her individualized practice plans, her swimmers can focus on their individual events, where they can score the most points for each event to win swim meets.
“When creating lineups for a close meet, I try out a few different variations for ultimate points, until I figure out the one I’m most confident in,” Walsh said. “There were two meets last year that we won by only 2-4 points, and I had the exact score when I calculated the meet before, so I am proud of that.”
The Two-Minute Rule
The two-minute rule is the most intense and important rule on the swim team. Right after stretching, swimmers have two minutes to get their swim cap on, goggles on, gather their water bottles and other equipment, and get into the pool to start the warmup.
If one person does not get into the pool and start swimming before the two minute mark, the team has to do a “punishment set,” intense swim workouts that could include 20 100-yard sprints off the blocks under 2:30 or 50 50-yard sprints continuously.
“It takes a lot of commitment to show up every day to a sport where you get in trouble for breathing too much,” Walsh jokes.
High Expectations
Walsh says that she expects “100% from everyone with intentional swimming. If you are just going through the motions, you aren’t going to get better. I make it clear that I am strict with our pool time, but lenient outside of it because team culture is so important. No meet is a guaranteed win or loss, but when we know we have an advantage or clear disadvantage, I like to switch things up to experiment with swimmers in other events.”
Although winning is looked at as the end result for any competitive team/sport, Walsh explains that her goals mean more than that.
“My goals for the team have always been to have a strong, supportive culture,” Walsh said. “I always say if we want more external support, it must start with us as a team like cheering for each other, lifting each other up, and understanding that we’re people first before athletes. When you have that type of team, motivation and success will follow.”
This is the opinion of Kristi Sundstrom, a senior reporter for the Chief Advocate and a co-captain of the Nonnewaug swim team.
