Courtesy: Club Kick Start Swimming
Former UNC Coach Christy Garth has joined Club Kick Start’s coaching team, where she will lead the elite age group swimmers and also help coach Claudio Battaglini with the elite seniors.
Club Kick Start’s coaching team includes Battaglini, a three-time Olympic coach, along with owner and head coach Sarah Chaires and former University of Virginia swimmer Kristi Komelasky.
Garth joined the UNC Men’s and Women’s coaching staff in 2008. Over her 12-year career as an assistant, she worked with a slew of NCAA qualifiers and U.S. National Team members, and was an integral member of the coaching staff that led to Carolina’s success over the decade with nearly 50 qualifiers for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials and another 30 for the 2016 Olympic Trials, setting numerous titles and school records.
Garth is a long-time Tar Heel, having captained two teams that won ACC titles in the 1990s. In fact, she swam on four UNC teams that won ACC crowns when she was an undergraduate. Garth was a four-year letterwinner on the women’s swim team and the winner of the program’s Hill Carrow Spirit Award in both of those seasons. She qualified for the U.S. Olympic Trials in 2000 and was an Olympic torchbearer in 2002 when the Winter Games were in Salt Lake City.
Prior to UNC, Garth’s collegiate coaching experience includes two seasons as an assistant at the University of Maryland in the early 2000s. She also served as an Interim Assistant Coach for the women’s team at the University of Michigan in 2000-01, also coaching with Club Wolverine during her time there.
Garth has also previously worked for the United States Golf Association (USGA) as the U.S. Women’s Open director’s assistant. Following that, she worked on production crews for ABC Sports from 1996-98, and also worked for NBC during the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games as part of the production crew. From 2001-03, she worked for Speedo USA as an accounts manager. Prior to coming to UNC in 2008, Garth was the head swim coach at Duchesne Academy in Houston, Texas.
Garth, who studied political science and communication studies at the University of North Carolina, is married to Trey Blazer, a physician at Duke Medical Center, and has two children.
She is described as having an energetic coaching style, bringing excitement, superior technical expertise and in-depth knowledge of the collegiate recruiting experience to Club Kick Start. Coach Garth will be an invaluable asset to Club Kick Start Elite swimmers’ such as Lily Willis, Lucca Battaglini, William Dunlap, Collin Davis as they navigate collegiate recruiting.
