Abi Liu, Courtesy: Bellevue Club Swim Team
The Bellevue Club Swim Team in Bellevue, Washington has announced the hiring of Abi Liu as the club’s new head coach. Liu comes to the team from Peak Swimming in northern California, a USA Swimming Silver Medal Club that she founded 11 years ago.
Liu takes over the position from Andrew Nguyen, who left this summer to take the head coaching job at the Scottsdale Aquatic Club in Arizona.
Liu was previously the aquatics director at Stanford and earned a degree in Kinesiology from San Jose State University.
At the 2021 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials, PEAK Swimming qualified two swimmers for the faster Wave II meet. 18-year old Skyler Smith placed 46th in the 100 breast, while 19-year old Ethan Hu finished 46th in the 200 fly and 38th in the 100 fly. Hu currently swims at Stanford, but is a PEAK alumnus and represented the club at Trials.
Liu has big dreams for her new team.
“Representation in our sport at the highest level is important to me,” Liu said of her team’s 2021 success. “As a female coach I was proud to have two swimmers represent PEAK at the wave two Olympic Trials this past summer.
“With BCST, I strongly believe that together we can not only take the swimmers at Bellevue to the 2024 Olympic Trials, but place them in the finals and beyond.”
Two female coaches placed swimmers on the U.S. Olympic pool swimming team for the Tokyo Olympics: Teri McKeever (Abbey Weitzeil, Katie McLaughlin) and Meghan O’Leary (100 breast gold medalist Lydia Jacoby). The 47 other members of the team were all coached primarily by men.
Chris Scott, who coached with Liu at PEAK for 8 years, takes over that program going forward. Liu says that the ability to hand off the program and create an opportunity for her mentee was important for her.
“When I founded PEAK swimming 11 years ago, we started with just 24 swimmers and over the years grew to a USA swimming silver medal club,” Liu said.
“I established an elite team of incredible swimmers and an incredible nationally recognized program. Bellevue Club has an incredible tradition and program that I have watched and respected over the years. I have been impressed with the team and staff at Bellevue Club Swim Team, the infrastructure BCST has established and will allow me to take my knowledge and expertise to grow the club and program to the next level.
“As for PEAK, I’m honored to hand PEAK to Coach Chris Scott who has coached alongside me with PEAK for 8 years, and will take over the head coach position at PEAK. As a coach and mentor, it’s important for me to use my position to open the door for others to lead and allow them to grow as well.”
Liu intends to be directly involved with the coaching at Bellevue at all levels, and coaching them both in the pool and out of it.
“The guiding principle for me throughout my swimming career and the athletes that I coach at ALL levels is building a strong technical swimming foundation and also building life skills to take with them beyond swimming.”
She also says that she’s not afraid to change and evolve as the science of the sport rolls on.
“I’m a student at heart and I’m always looking for things to change and improve. As my swimmers will say; I’ve always over-prepared them for their college journey. We are fortunate that we have such amazing resources in sports science, our sport is ever changing at a very fast pace. As a coach, open mindedness is a must and learning is a two way street! I’m excited for the new journey at Bellevue Club Swim Team.”
Liu was the 2008 and 2016 Pacific Swimming Age Group Coach of the Year and the 2019 Pacific Swimming Coach of the Year. She was also a member of the USA Swimming Junior National Team coaching staff in 2019 and 2020 as the personal coach of Hu, who was a member of that team.
As an athlete, Liu joined the Chinese National Team at 13 years old and was a two-time Chinese National Champion. She won a silver medal at the 1994 Asian Games in the 200 backstroke and was an event winner at a stop of the 1993 FINA World Cup Series.
The Bellevue Club Swim Team, located in the Seattle suburb of Bellevue, sent 2 male swimmers, Noah Brune and Kyle Millis, to the Wave I Olympic Trials meet. Brune finished 7th in the 1500 and 5th in the 800, while Millis was 27th in the 100 back at that meet.
They also sent 1 female swimmer, Mia Chang, to the meet. She finished 44th in the 100 back and will head to UCLA this fall.
More recently, the team finished 10th at the Speedo Summer Championships – West meet. There they were again led by Brune and Millis. Brune finished 10th in the 1500 free, while Millis was the runner-up in the 100 back in 56.29.
Millis is a member of the varsity team at Cal, though he represented his home squad at the summer championship events, while Brune is entering his 3rd season at Harvard.
Among the club’s best-known products are Gabby Dang, currently a rising junior at UCLA who was the Washington High School State Champion iin the 100 free in 2017 and who was an NCAA qualifier individually in 2021; and Matt King, who swam 18.96 in the 50 yard free at the SEC Championships last season as a freshman at Alabama and 41.63 in the 100 yard free. That 100 free time made him the 3rd-fastest freshman in the history of the event. He is transferring to Virginia for his sophomore season.
all she has brought is an oppressive swimming environment to BC. favoritism towards fast female swimmers led to a majority of male senior swimmers to leave for other teams in the area. AI generated emails are pelted at families on the weekly undermining her credibility as a head coach. BC has not been a USA Swim gold standard team since her arrival after COVID.
All these months later and she has succeeded in destroying BCST… So sad
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For many years on deck, as a competing parent, I have always seen Abi as positive and supportive and collaborative with the other coaches on deck. This is awesome and congrats!
Win win!
Great move, Abi. May this new position will help you become greater.
hell yeah more lgbtq representation
Packing all those sneakers must have been a challenge.
Abi, way to go. You are well deserved this new position. You are the best.