We sat down with Kevin Mann, the head coach of Loyola High School, days before the end of his season AKA the CIF State Championships. Mann has been coaching at Loyola for 23 years and puts an emphasis on team culture, even with standouts on his team like Rex Maurer. After losing the Southern Section meet to Santa Margarita by 3 points, Mann looks to lead his team to a back-to-back state title this weekend.
Mann also discusses the work-life balance between coaching during the CA high school season (February-May) and being a producer in Hollywood, having just wrapped on shooting a film Tuesday that stars Michael Keaton and Mila Kunis.
While it is true that many schools, especially the privates, in California have success largely due to the club swimmers that attend their school, it is that much more difficult to build a cohesive culture within a team with key kids having club priorities and pressures.
CIF and the various sections have rules and policies that prevent schools from sponsoring or affiliating with clubs like you have in other parts of the country.
Managing the various clubs that all have different coaches with different policies and expectations for high school swimmers, is a management achievement! Many of the club coaches have enormous egos and policies that make it difficult for their swimmers to commit and benefit from the high… Read more »
I also think that high school coaches can offer a different kind of relationships with club swimmers than their club coach. A good analogy is that the club coach is like mom or dad and the high school coach is like the aunt or uncle. The mom or dad is in the weeds day in, day out, but the aunt and uncle influence the swimmers too. Club swimming can put a lot of weird psychological pressures on swimmers, for example, and sometimes the high school coach can help relieve or help an athlete deal with some of those pressures. High school coaches often have different real-life experiences that they bring to the table that sometimes club coaches are missing. In… Read more »
Things Mann should have said,
“I have the best team money can buy.”
“Thanks to all of the club coaches who actually train the swimmers on my team.”
“Thanks to all of the club programs around the country who have brought these athletes up through their processes”
cmon give him more credit. I wouldn’t have made D1 without Mann since my club team was trash and his training really helped me come into my own
Kevin gives the club coaches a ton of credit for coaching the athletes in the interview.
Also, by this logic, should every college coach we have on for an interview thank every club coach of every athlete that has success under them?
Yes
As a former swimmer of his this is absolutely ridiculous and you’re a Tier 1 hater. False on all accounts quite frankly
sounds like someones just tired of losing to his swimmers, need some water to drown the salt out
Kevin gave plenty of credit to USA coaches. I think he’s pretty clear-eyed about what his contribution is to the swimmers he coaches. He was also extremely gracious to his competitors.
Answering to the silly recruitment statement, I suggest that it may be the culture that Kevin and his staff have created that makes the school and team so attractive to swimmers. They want to go there in part because of Kevin. I also suggest that Lea and Erik Maurer know top-level competitive swimming very well, and what they saw from the team when their sons were getting ready for high school influenced their decision. Repeat hundreds of times for the many kids who have graduated from Loyola.
Finally, I… Read more »
“The best swimmers money can buy”… and yet they have a nine lane pool from the 80s? You’re entitled to your opinion, but not the facts. Have you seen some of the amazing pools other schools have compared to Loyola? Too many to mention.
Also, Kevin was really classy and very generous regarding working with club coaches, mentioned one by name and their competitors! Santa Margarita has an excellent swim program. They have a 50 meter pool and a club that practices there. Kevin showed a lot of respect, gave high praise and took the high road by not making excuse; despite his team had a 17 points deficit before swimming started, and then be edged out by 3… Read more »