Keller High School head swim & dive coach Jamie Shults has resigned from her position, the school confirmed to SwimSwam on Friday.
Shults, who was hired as the Keller head coach in 2022, has led the program to an incredible amount of success over the past three years, including the boys’ team winning three straight Texas UIL 6A state titles from 2023 to 2025.
This past season, Shults led the girls’ program to the 6A state title, making Keller just the third school to sweep the boys’ and girls’ titles in state history.
Shults was named the 2024 NFHS Sectional High School Boys Swimming & Diving Coach of the Year and the 2025 Section and UIL Boys Swimming and Diving Coach of the Year.
She coached Maximus Williamson to a standout senior year in 2024-25, highlighted by his National High School Records in the boys’ 100 free (41.54) and 200 free (1:30.46). Williamson was named the 2025 UIL Boys 6A Swimmer of the Meet after winning five state titles (including three relays).
Shults, who previously competed for Keller as a swimmer, took over the role as head coach from her mother, Linda Shults, who held the position for 14 years before stepping down in 2022.
The reasoning behind Shults’ resignation is unknown. The school would “not share details of personnel matters” beyond confirming her resignation.
Shults has not responded to a request for comment.
And now Keller is being investigated and may lose their State Championship for violating UIL rules.
I feel like Kyle Sockwell must pull his hair out when he reads this nonsense. “Let’s see, what can we do to keep swimming irrelevant in our high schools?” I know! We can make it really hard for the best swimmers to get the best coaching and most time in the pool!! That way, we won’t win anything, no one will care, and no one will go swim in college!!! YEAH FOR THE KIDS!!!
What a bunch of nonsense here.
THE KIDS!! IT’S ABOUT THE KIDS!!!
The stream of club coaches in these comments insisting that the only way for this to work is for kids to train full-time with their clubs and show up for championship season is really missing the point.
Haha. I’m no coach. However, if you do have a future in college swimming, you honestly should stay away from high school swimming. Honestly, there is nothing to gain from a swimming standpoint.
The reason the kids like to swim high school is because school is where their friends are, and they want swimming to be relevant and to be noticed. You become relevant and get noticed by WINNING.
High school swimming is where even elite level kids go to actually enjoy and get excited about the sport. Club and club meets are quite frankly not as exciting for the swimmers. Relays in club and USA meets are meaningless in comparison to HS.
It should be all about the kids! These kids all work very hard. Until some jealous person gets upset about a double win and wants to find reasons to anonymously go after the winners by reaching out to the media? Ask yourself who stands to benefit from doing that?
Isnt it the same people that were involved in the NTN and Carroll take down a few years ago. Say Those boys didn’t move for athletic purposes, recruit other swimmers but got away with not going to their high school practices. Why did LAC have a pool use contract with Keller during school hours and why were those kids allowed to skip her class to train with the LAC coaches instead of going to class? UIL might want to investigate. This is a clear violation. Maybe the state of Texas too because I don’t think you can falsify attendance records. Hmmm…
They left Carroll because they didn’t want to swim HS practices and Travis wouldn’t let them have morning practices.
Then Dan Balent quit during a meet and immediately went to LAC, taking a lot of the talent with him.
The real coach of Keller these past two seasons doesn’t even work for the district
She didn’t coach Maximus, he only went to LAC practices.
She got fired, nothing to do with the future of Keller swim guys her family has been coaching Keller swim for decades, she was fired district gave her an ultimatum resign or we will fire you she went specifically some parent is responsible reporting her to the district for the truth which is essentially she has never coached Keller HS, all of the KHS swimmers on the LAC National Team training group did not have to practice and didn’t with KHS at all and they would get out of school go straight to club and be counted present, Jamie only coached non National Team swimmers (respectfully, everyone who didn’t contribute to their accomplishments)
Are we really that shocked after what Maximus and Company did to NTN?
This is the case with pretty much all of the most successful high school programs in the country, outside of elite boarding schools.
The Massachusetts girls state championship is pretty much determined by who trains with their high school coach the least.
Mass HS swimming was chaos, my observation from a few years back was many of the top kids don’t even bother because it’s exceptionally difficult to add a full HS practice/meet schedule to a full club schedule. Some club coaches are cool, others are not. To me the real problems were the club affiliated coaches also coaching HS always looking to screw kids over from competing club teams over the “bona fide” rule. My daughter swam all 4 years for her HS under a moonlighting club coach that hated her club. Everyone knew exactly what club teams frowned on HS competition and exactly what HS teams weren’t forcing club swimmers to double up on practices and what HS coaches would… Read more »
You summed things up pretty accurately. The funniest part is that every coach you talk to admits that the MIAA has too many rules that essentially punish kids for trying to swim with a club team during high school season…but none of them want to change those rules, because then they couldn’t use them to get other teams in trouble.
Holy run-on sentences, Batman!
Is this unusual? Exactly how my Texas HS worked.
No, it’s not unusual, nor is complaining about it.
The way high school swimming works is that all of the most successful teams have cultivated good relationships with a top local club team, whether it’s shared staffing or pool space.
These relationships, while mutually beneficial for the clubs, schools, and swimmers (as another poster said, high school teams need swimmers and club teams need pool space), usually skirt the official rules of state high school athletics boards (kids doing their home working during high school practice and then swimming with their club), which creates a lot of controversy.
After Maximus left coach didn’t want anything to do with Keller
Comment on a previous, unrelated, swimswam article said she was fired.
Apparently, she was fired! Her momma got her the job, and she did not do it? The local club deserves all of the credit for the teams wins. The parents complained each year, and some even took notes on her for years. It is no secret that most of the varsity parents wanted her gone.
They did the same thing to Kevin Murphy at Southlake Carrol.
We need a deep dive into the horrors of LAC.
Horrors? What are you talking about? Both high schools have apparent legitimate reasons to let coaches resign, nothing to do with LAC! Good try! Not sure which high school, if any, gets kids 100% ready to win state championships.
You don’t find it odd that the two powerhouse high school swim programs both have pushed their coaches out in the same year?
From someone in Fort Worth it really does have something to do with LAC, unfortunately. “Horrors” is a bit of a exaggeration though. LAC is pretty successful and the National Team swimmers 99% will swim in college it’s more so LAC seems to overstep their reach they want to control HSs swimming programs and if you don’t comply they will probably bully their way to getting you fired.
There’s a HUGE difference with Murphy. He cared for his swimmers and worked hard to improve them. Some say he overworked them. But, if he did, he did it under UIL policy. Many club swimmers didn’t like the excessive training under him, though.
Shults is known to be worthless. At best, she’s a JV coach or an assistant age group club coach. Nepotism got her the job over many qualified candidates.
Either way, this doesn’t have anything to do with LAC. Many high schools have bad swim coaches because its a sport most ADs dont understand. These 2 get written about because they’ve had big results.
Remove all the club kids and then how does either school rank?
High schools need club swimmers; club teams need access to pools.
They don’t need club swimmers. Yes they would be faster overall if they have them. High school is a class. Go to class. Don’t do drugs. Don’t cheat. Be a team player. It’s not that complicated.
High school coaches need club swimmers to keep their jobs via wins. Club teams need access to high school pools to invest and develop the swimmers. If the high school coach has different rules for the club swimmers, that’s on them and their ADs.
I have to say- follow my bubbles is most definitely the most accurate comment here this is very much so what is happening. Murphys firing though was somewhat related to LAC. Shults was fired for doing nothing and Murphy was fired for doing to much not allowing his kids to go to National Team morning practices etc. LAC coaches disliked that Murphy force tapered them or did stuff that ruined the National Teams training plans and meet prep. But Murphy certainly was not like Shults he did not really care what LAC wanted he trained his swimmers relentlessly even sometimes forcing them to go to HS on weekends or doubles in the weekdays, this is what got him fired.
I don’t believe Coach Murphy ever once had doubles on the weekdays or ever broke the UIL rule of eight hours a week outside of the school day.
Nor did he train his swimmers “relentlessly”, at least not anywhere near what they do at club practices.
To your point about him not caring what LAC wanted, the coaches at LAC were, for years, completely unwilling to communicate with him in order to collaborate on what was best for the athletes.
Is UIL rule really 8 hours a week? Then he would have broken it with at least 11 hours a week, plus required practice on some school holidays.
Never mind, weight training is not included in that 8-hour rule.
Yes, Murphy was accused of overworking kids, and Jamie had her team managed by parents. No secret there and every varsity parent knew it and complained about it. The kids did what they were told to do, and the parents pretended that Jamie was a good coach. Ask any honest Christian for the truth about the last 3 years and even beyond and you will see how terrible she was in this role. Anyone now disagreeing is rewriting history and lying. Complacency allowed for this mess, and the lesson taught to kids was not ok. Time to look in the mirror and ask if yourself if you are ok with teaching kids that lying is ok???
I don’t believe I had a single practice out of roughly 700 practices under Coach Murphy that was over 5,500 yards. He always kept his practices consistent from year to year with a lot of race-pace training as well as anaerobic training and I benefitted greatly from his workouts when coupled with the frankly harder, more base-oriented 6,000 and 7,000-yard workouts in club
No one did “the same thing” to anyone. If a school fires/retires” you, then you did something wrong…..simple!