“More Is Not Always Better”: How The Las Vegas Swim Club Rebuilt To The National Stage

This article originally appeared in the 2023 College Preview issue of SwimSwam Magazine. Subscribe here.

At the end of 2013, Peter Mavro and Amber Stewart were given the task of resurrecting a swim club on the verge of falling apart. With determination, a clear vision, and the influence of one of swimming’s brightest minds in Russell Mark, they were able to make it happen.

When Mavro and Stewart first took over the Las Vegas Swim Club (LVSC) as head and assistant coach respectively, there were only 25 members and a 50% athlete retention rate. Numbers had been dropping for the club ever since their training facility, the Pavilion Center Pool, shut down in 2010 and they had to relocate. When Pavillion opened up in 2012 again, LVSC had their facility back, but the culture and outlook of the club was still very bleak.

At that time, LVSC’s only purpose was to serve as a feeder organization—kids showed up to swim for three months, and then they either quit or moved on to the bigger, more lucrative Sandpipers of Nevada (SAND) club that was just ten minutes down the road. In other words, LVSC’s biggest competition was the club that would later go on to produce six different Olympic and World Championship team members in the next decade.

“There was just this constant revolving door of kids coming in and kids coming out,” Mavro said. “You can’t build a consistent culture in that kind of scenario,”

In front of them, Mavro and Stewart faced an organization that was barely holding itself together, and the fact that they were next-door neighbors with the biggest age group talent hotbed in the country only rubbed more salt into the wound. It was very easy for them to raise the white flag of surrender, but instead, they decided from day one that they were committed to reform.

“I remember saying, what is our goal? What are we trying to be?” Mavro said. “From the day that I started working with this team, my mindset was to teach these kids, teach our families what it means to be in a committed environment, what it means to work hard, and not have it be a revolving door of swimmers.”

It started from the little things, such as establishing attendance requirements, holding team meetings with parents, getting age groupers to have their cap and goggles on before practices started, never-ending practice early unless it was absolutely necessary, and finding alternate pools instead of canceling practice when the Pavillion wasn’t available.

Another thing that Mavro and Stewart had to do was “put their egos aside”—even though Mavro is the head coach, he mainly works with age groupers, while assistant coach Stewart works with the older swimmers in the National Team group. That’s a non-traditional arrangement, with most clubs assigning their head coach to their fastest group of athletes.“I believe in assessing my own strengths. That 10 to 14-year-old level is where my biggest strength is, so why wouldn’t I be in that group? I believe Amber’s biggest strength is to really inspire kids to do the impossible on a daily basis, so why wouldn’t she be in that group?” Mavro said. “It just made so much sense to me, and that’s why we’re set up the way we’re set up, so everybody can focus on their strengths.”

Every small step that Mavro and Stewart took helped build LVSC from the bottom up, and in the end, it culminated into a growing culture of commitment and hard work.

Soon enough, the work of Mavro and Stewart began to pay off. In 2018, LVSC qualified swimmers for Sectionals for the first time. In 2019, Jack Gallob became LVSC’s first Summer and Winter Juniors qualifier. In 2022, Owen Carlsen committed to Utah as the club’s first Power 5 Conference commit—and his brother Max is on track to becoming one of the top recruits in the class of 2025. The number of swimmers in LVSC grew to around 200 and held steady, which is in line with Marvo and Stewart’s mission to create a team that is both serious about swimming but still has that small, family-based feel.

“That’s what separates us,” Mavro said. “When you’re right next to another gigantic team that’s shown a lot of success, you really have to give your families reason to believe that they’re getting something special. We want to build an environment where people want to be—a hard work environment where the expectations are high, but we do not have coaches that yell, make kids feel bad about themselves, any of those kids. It’s really about inspiring the kids to want to do it for themselves.”

“We’re not just trying to throw a bunch of kids in the pool and let the best athletes find their way. We are trying to develop every single athlete to the best they can be.”

“More is not always better, better is better,” Stewart added, making a statement that is frequently repeated throughout the national group that she coaches.

Living And Learning

With LVSC and SAND being located so close together, they sometimes share a pool and hold practices back-to-back. When Stewart first began coaching LVSC’s national group, she noticed that her swimmers acted complacently in front of the SAND swimmers, standing aside and waiting for them to finish warm-down even though it was LVSC’s practice time. After time, though, Stewart decided that the dynamic and mentality of her program needed to change.

“One of the first major things that I did as a coach was [make it clear that] we get in the pool at 4:30, we get in on time,” Stewart said. “There was a little bit of friction in the beginning, but [SAND] became very respectful of that and realized ‘oh, okay, they’re serious. They aren’t gonna stand around just because we have this extra 300 to do.’”

Again, it was little things like these that sent out a message that LVSC was no longer going to be the pushover, and that they deserved the same respect as any other established club. Even though Stewart and Marvo don’t want the entire identity of their club to revolve around being next to the Sandpipers, they acknowledge that getting over the hurdle of being overshadowed by their neighbors is a big part of what makes LVSC the club that they are today.

In the early days of Stewart and Mavro’s coaching, the LVSC had always looked towards SAND, with discussions at board meetings constantly being about trying to emulate what SAND does. Over time, however, they learned how to both co-exist with their neighborhood giant, as well as build their own, distinct, identity in their presence.

“My mindset was, we’re not Sandpipers, we’re LVSC. We don’t need to do what they do, and frankly, we’re not gonna be able to compete with them that way,” Mavro said.”If we’re trying to build a mini-Sandpipers, why would a swimmer or a family ever stay with us when the Sandpipers are already there?”

Beyond the fact that they are both located in Las Vegas, LVSC and SAND don’t actually have much in common. SAND has over 500 swimmers, while LVSC is less than half its size. LVSC has a lower volume training philosophy than SAND. SAND does three doubles a week, LVSC doesn’t do doubles during the school year because of pool availability issues—which Mavro thinks acclimatizes swimmers to the training hour limits in the NCAA. Not all swimmers need the same thing, and LVSC offered families in the Las Vegas area an alternate option if their swimmers don’t fit the Sandpiper lifestyle.

“We are very different programs,” Stewart said. “With the approach that we have, which is different from theirs, we have kept swimmers in our program that probably would not have stayed swimming otherwise.”

Besides some tension here and there, not much bad blood exists between LVSC and SAND. Mavro is good friends with Sandpiper age group coach Chris Barber—the two of them are open books, talking about practice strategy, training, and season planning whenever they see each other.

At the end of the day, Mavro and Stewart believe that having SAND right next to them ultimately makes LVSC a stronger club, and they are grateful for the challenges that come with it.

“Having the Sandpipers right next to us holds us to an incredibly high standard,” Mavro said. “We cannot get away with making lazy choices. As much as it can be frustrating, it is our greatest motivator by far. We’re better because we’re right next to them.”

“The teams [of Las Vegas] have quality staff that are working against each other, but they are also working to build a really fast swimming community.”

“Yeah, there’s friction and frustration, but at the end of the day, we’re all here to support each other and make the world of swimming together.” Stewart added.

Taking The Next Step

Less than ten years after their rebuild, LVSC was seeing the kind of national-level success that some much older clubs haven’t experienced before. Prior to 2019, the club didn’t know what coaching Junior National and DI-caliber swimmers was like—they ran headlong into a lot of “firsts” and learned by doing.

When Jack Gallob, LVSC’s first Winter Juniors qualifier, came to the National Team group for the first time, he was instantaneously moved from the slowest lane to the fastest lane “with no in-betweens.” It became clear that he was a one-of-a-kind type of swimmer, and shortly thereafter, Stewart began giving him sets that nobody else in the club was capable of doing.

Initially, the transition for Gallob was challenging. In fact, he even complained to Stewart that his situation wasn’t fair. But Stewart didn’t buy it.

“I told [him],’ I think what you’re trying to do is say that the definition of fair is that everybody gets the same thing.’” Stewart said. “But if that’s the definition of fair that I abide by as a coach, then I’m not doing a good job, because my definition of fair is that everybody gets what they need. And [he needed] something that [was] different from the rest of the athletes in the pool.

“And he remembers that conversation—it was really impactful, and a light bulb switched. I think he realized, ‘oh, okay, I don’t wanna get away with less. I wanna get away with what I can do and maximize what I can do.”

Three years after swimming at his first winter juniors in 2019, Gallob is now set to swim at Indiana University-Purdue (IUPUI) starting in the fall of 2023. Since 2019, he has taken his 100 back personal best from 50.21 to 49.18 and his 200 back personal best from 1:50.15 to 1:47.56, amongst drops in other events.

After Gallob, the success train just kept on rolling at LVSC, with Owen Carlsen excelling in distance freestyle and committing to Utah, and Max Carlsen becoming the 8th-fastest 15-year-old of all-time in the 1000 free. Joe Christ came into LVSC with a 2:27 200 free and dropped down to a 1:39 by the time he was a senior and committed to Air Force. At the Carlsbad Sectionals in March 2023, LVSC won first place in the “small team division”.

Once Gallob reached heights that had never been attained before, it caused a domino effect.

“Seeing [Gallob] do it makes that belief for the next group of kids,” Mavro said. “When you see your teammates do these sorts of things, it does help you with that belief so that when the coach sits down with you and looks at your individual goals, let’s say it’s making futures—Amber [can say] ‘well, I think your goals need to be a little more higher than that. You’ve got more in you, you’ve seen your teammates do it’.”

Stewart said that she and Mavro discuss goals with all of their swimmers, trying to make them “ambitious and realistic.” After deciding upon what their goals are, those goals will then get laminated and put in the gear bags of swimmers so they can be reminded of them every day.

Increasing success also means greater chances of a swimmer competing at the highest level in college, which was also a hurdle that Mavro and Stewart had to overcome, as they had never experienced intense college recruiting until recently. However, just like with everything else, they adapted.

Stewart, who swam in college herself at Brigham Young University, used her own NCAA connections to help her swimmers in the recruiting process. Gallob had relatives who swam for Kentucky, and they came over to LVSC to speak about the college experience. Ben Loorz, the head coach of the University of Las Vegas-Nevada held a PowerPoint night at the Pavillion once. In addition, Stewart herself listened to swimming podcasts and exchanged ideas with other coaches on Facebook to familiarize herself more with recruiting.

“It’s not my forte by any means, but having relationships and being willing to reach out to coaches when coaches reach out to us and making sure that we’re responsive to them is [something that I’m trying to be better at],” Stewart said. “We’re kind of learning as we go.”

However, arguably the best resource for LVSC has been Russell Mark, who is best known for being USA Swimming’s former High Performance Manager, and who now works for the American Swimming Coaches’ Association (ASCA). Mavro knew Mark from their time together at the University of Virginia, and the two are close friends. Frequently, Mark analyzes the strokes and techniques of LVSC swimmers via videos that Mavro sends him, and provides LVSC with connections to the great swimming community.

For example, LVSC’s national group got invited to an ASCA clinic via Mark, where they got to meet names like Ohio State head coach Bill Dorenkott, Virginia head coach Todd DeSorbo, as well as Mel Marshall, the coach of world record holder Adam Peaty. At that clinic, DeSorbo arranged a time with Mavro and Stewart where they would be able to travel to Virginia and come watch one of their practices.

“It’s random for a small team in Las Vegas to happen to have access to what I would consider the greatest swimming mind in this country,” Mavro said. “Without Russell, we would not be where we are. Everything I’ve done in coaching and developing the kids is based on everything I’ve learned from him, as far as stroke technique.”

In the end, however, everything circles back to the values that Mavro and Stewart had wanted to ingrain in LVSC from the very beginning. It’s not about the accolades, college commits, or times—it’s about developing a family-friendly culture, and for swimmers to grow into the best versions of themselves inside and outside the pool.

“I can’t say how proud I am of what we’ve been able to do with our program and what our program’s athletes do…because if they don’t buy in then I’m out of a job,” Mavro said. “You can’t have a national group if you don’t instill the tools that the kids need to be there in the first place. I want to see the kids succeed, but I want to see the kids fail and learn from it and learn how to take that next step.”

“One of the things we hear oftentimes…is ‘your kids are always so nice and respectful.’ And that that’s always going to be mean more than me than ‘your kids were so fast.’”