Brazilian World Record holder Cesar Cielo will head to Sun Devil Aquatics in Tempe, Arizona to train with Scott Goodrich, who has been named the club’s new head coach.
Goodrich takes over the role vacated when former head coach Patrick Nalley took a job as an assistant coach on Tim Murphy’s new staff at Penn State.
Goodrich has been coaching Cielo for roughly a year now, since the 2008 Olympic champion (50 free), 2011/2013 World Champion (50 fly), and defending 2013 50 free World Champion returned from knee surgery after the Olympics. After training with the PRO16 group that he helped found in the lead-up to London, where Cielo was doing heavy weight workouts and high yardage, he turned to Goodrich for a more tempered approach given his return from injury. Reports are that the two went to a regimen that was heavily sprint-based, and the result was a 50 free World title in Barcelona.
Now, Goodrich returns to Tempe, where he had previously worked with the Arizona State NCAA program.
Goodrich and Cielo overlapped as teammates at Auburn for three seasons from 2005-2008.
Goodrich is an excellent choice by Cesar, he has a coaching education that you can only get in one place! He didn’t get it through Hawke or Marsh!
I would be shocked if MOST of the world class athletes aren’t basically coaching themselves. Sure they need someone to bounce ideas off of and to offer some insight from another perspective, but does anyone here think these 25 year old pprofessionals are showing up to a practice and just waiting for a coach to write a set on the board?
I think who the “coach” is largely comes down to the trust and comfort of the athlete.
Clearly Katinka feels that way about her coach… and my guess is Cesar feels good about Goodrich being his sounding board.
The big name swimmers in the AZ area often cone for one or two events and swim relays for the senior state meet.
AZ senior meet could have a line up of Caesar, Roland and greevers in the 50 free. Could be a lot of fun.
Totally looking forward to this. Last year’s spring senior state championships in Arizona was a blast to watch when the Ford team came up and raced, along with Mr. Schoemann. We’ve seen Roland even at a few masters meets; maybe Cesar will show up for some of those, as well. If nothing else, this should mean Cesar will be at the Mesa Grand Prix, I hope. Great time to be a swim fan in Arizona.
i agree with erik. the beauty of swimming is the alive and evolving nature of the sport. there are so many new training methods and ideas that crop up all over the world that it really doesn’t matter how much experience someone has, if they have the right athletes and the right ideas, the results will come. but i think its good for goodrich if this works out well for him. stuff like this are what others recognize, so this may help to bolster him in respect among other coaches and the greater swimming community
TUI, from my extremely limited experience sharing a pool deck with David Marsh while he was still with Auburn (training trip in winter 2006) everyone one on his teams was basically a coach in training. They all were EXPECTED to understand the sport, how their body moves through the water and how to optimize it and help each other out in the water by pointing out things to fix, it was awesome to watch. Goodrich more than likely falls in that category. Combined with high levels of success in the water, its only natural he would have an affinity for coaching.
Just because he hasn’t coached a big name doesn’t mean he can’t coach Cielo..
On the flip side, just… Read more »
Not sure how much Goodrich actually coached Cesar prior to Worlds (and for what duration). Cesar was with Hawke and another coach in Brasil for a while prior as well-plus the recovery from knee surgery where he didn’t swim at all.
Because Goodrich swam for Marsh for a year or two (Quick as well) dosent mean anything about his ability to coach. So much more involved in coaching than being an athlete coached by Marsh. Big stretch here. Being a good swimmer also has little to do with being a great coach.
I agree with you that there is more to it then that. You cannot deny the experiences an elite level athlete has with technique driven coaches (Quick), let alone sprint and technique driven coaches (Marsh, Hawke). Being observant for several years is an education that cannot be overlooked. Being an elite level swimmer and know what goes into training, meet warm-ups, the ready room, international finals, travel is a huge asset.
I worked the Auburn camp in summer 2008, the last Auburn Summer Camp Quick worked. I learned more about coaching in those 4 weeks from observing him working with the age groupers then I did in the 4 years previous to it when I began coaching in 2004.
You… Read more »
I get that Cesar and Scott are old buddies, but still don’t understand this one. Scott has never coached an elite swimmer prior to Cesar, and has limited coaching experience. Why would Cesar not choose a proven coach or even just coach himself (which I’ve heard he is doing anyway)?
He won two World Championships. That might be all the evidence he needs that it’s working.
You could ask the same about Katinka Hosszu – why in the world would she leave the coaching staff and team that brought her to a world record and NCAA titles to train with her now husband who was a middling college swimmer as recently as 2011 with little to no coaching experience?
Seems to have worked out for both Cielo and Hosszu to take these sorts of risks. I would also expect that on the coach’s end, knowing that they are solely responsible for the training of an elite athlete would force them to greatly accelerate their learning curve as their reputations are on the line as well. They would have a greater investment in the success of… Read more »
I tend to agree with you, Josh. Experience goes a long way in trying to masterfully guide a large team of swimmers to success – I don’t think anyone would argue that.
But when you’re talking one-on-one, the trust and relationship between those two people is every bit as important, I would think. I mean, at this point, Goodrich probably has as much experience with CESAR as anyone besides Hawke, so that has value relative to other coaches who might have decades of experience training people who AREN’T Cesar.
Right now, Scott have the experience of a full season of training with Cielo.It worked, but because of his knees still recovering, Cielo is 0.2-0.3 tenths off of his peak in 50 free.21.20 is his next goal, and Scott is already destroying him in some training sets(i saw some pics in twitter).
Maybe Scott could ask Coley Stickles how to manage a former teammate. Coley seemed to do pretty well with his college teammate Roland Schoeman. Up until the point that Roland started training with him, Coley had no experience with coaching elite athletes.
From my understanding Coley and Roland didn’t have a great coach/swimmer relationship. Roland asked Coley multiple times to adjust elements of training but Coley refused. Coley is a great age-group coach but definitely not a senior caliber coach. Scott on the other hand is doing a great job with Cesar. Great move for Scott will be great to see them racing here in AZ.
Not sure about their relationship, but Coley did an amazing job with Roland (5th in the Olympics ain’t too bad for a 33 year old). He also had some other fantastic post grads at Phoenix and in CA.