Brian delighted with Swim Performance Coach Award
BRIAN Sweeney of Templeogue Swim club was announced as Performance Coach of the Year at the 2024 Swim Ireland Awards for the second year in a row.
Sweeney has coached Irish Olympian Ellen Walshe since she was eleven years old and receives the prestigious award off the back of a very successful year working with Walshe in Paris during the summer.
“I am delighted with the award, its representative of the opportunity to work with Ellen and many capable athletes over the year.
“We have a staff of five and to have Ellen here truly is fantastic.”
Walshe had never qualified for the 400m until this year, and she did so in record breaking fashion as she beat the national record.
The Templeogue Swim club athlete was ranked 13th before her Olympic race in the summer but managed to finish seventh.
Qualifying for the 400ms finals remains one of Sweeney’s crowning moments during his coaching career.
“From a coaching perspective, I was at the start/finish end of the pool, and it truly was one of the greatest moments of my coaching career to see her put her hand up on that wall and look up to see she is an Olympic finalist.”
Sweeney is part of a team of five coaches at the Templeogue club which works with various athletes day to day.
“Yeah, it’s more representative of the club as a whole and its continued focus to improve the quality of swimmers within the club.”
“We have 19 swimmers on regional and national squads, five on national squads.
“The club is only 126 kids this year so to have that depth of athletes training every day is just representative of the nature of the club.”
“We had a very strong Leinster Championship, the orientation of the cub is that kids have the competitive attitude to progress over time at the sport of competitive swimming. You’re trying to give everyone the skillsets to let everyone grow and that comes back to the skills and the facilities.”
“My role is that I’m the head coach in a team of five head coaches so you’re trying to get the underpin of ideologies to create good swimming is in everything we do here.”
Next up for Sweeney is the short course World Championships in Budapest in December, where Ellen Walsh will be looking to go one better than her silver medal picked up at the event back in 2021.
