Conversation With the Coach

Today I am talking with Bridget Swailes. She has been a longtime assistant cross-country coach in the combined Danville-New London program. Starting this fall, she will be coaching her own team of strictly New London students.

Starting a program from the ground up is a challenge she is ready to take on. Her expectations for this first season are to have fun and begin to build a program that fosters a family-like atmosphere. She hopes to see growth over the next few years by being visible in the community and the school so the kids can get to know what cross-country is and what the team does.

Bridget feels ready to take on this new challenge. She has learned from the best. She told me, “Being an assistant coach under Lucas Gourley (Danville’s XC coach) was a great experience. He has a wealth of knowledge about cross-country training. I spent several years before that as an assistant to Mike Klesner which was also a great learning experience. As a whole, the 15 years I spent coaching in Danville, within the Danville-New London shared program was great. I would not be able to be the head coach I hope to be without that experience.”

She currently does not have an assistant coach. Numbers dictate the second coach, and Bridget is hoping that she will have the necessary numbers by next year.

On her inaugural team, she has four freshmen that are returning from the JH program. They are Irelyn Kelly, Natan Bergman, Zayden Lawrence, and Jayden Wagner. The fifth runner is newcomer Elijah Ingwersen.

The JH team currently has four runners, but their practice doesn’t officially start until the first day of school, so the numbers could change She has been encouraging a few more but won’t have a firm number until school starts.

Bridget is excited to get the season started. Most of the kids have spent several days a week this summer coming to the summer practices and have shown a lot of progress as the season has started.”

The Tiger Cross-Country team has their first meet against Pekin on Sept. 5 in Ottumwa at Wildwood Park.

Best of luck to Coach Swailes and her team, and as always … Go Tigers!