Mr. Craig Young                                                                    

How many people have made an impact on your life? One of the many people who has made an impact on my life is my school swim coach Mr. Craig Young. Three qualities that make him a good coach are his high expectations, he's proud of our accomplishments, and he makes swimming fun.

Most coaches expect a lot from their players, but Mr. Young doesn't care if we win or lose as long as we swam as fast as we could and didn't give up. I am always upset if I don't get top three at meets, and he’s taught me it's not about what you get, it’s the effort and time you put into it. Mr. Young pushes us so hard because he cares about the whole team, for example, instead of focusing on certain people, he helps everyone. He helped me a lot with confidence in racing, because I would go against grades above me, and swimming against seniors when you’re a freshman gets intimating. Mr. Young also helped me with techniques that would make me go faster. He’s is a very good coach because of how hard he pushes us even if we think we can't do it.

The team I am on is full of people that have a lot of accomplishments from activities outside of school like the Boy Scouts, and especially swim accomplishments. Mr. Young makes sure every single accomplishment gets recognized after every meet or practice. One of the things that I enjoy that he does is after meets he highlights some of the big events that day that he thinks were excellent. Mr. Young also congratulates the people who finish the 500 freestyle for the first time. If you are not a swimmer, it is a very long event that is hard and tiring. Because Mr. Young congratulates every accomplishment, it brings us together to be happy for each other.

Swimming is a hard sport, and even harder to make some practices fun, but somehow everyday, even if the main set is very challenging, we end up having some kind of fun. Swimming is like any other sport; you practice a lot to get better, and you have fun drills and not-so-fun drills. One drill Mr. Young runs requires you to practice your turns and sprints, and it is very fun and interesting especially when it gets down to the final couple people. Even though you can't make every practice fun, every once in awhile Mr. Young would rewards us with fun practices for our hard work.

There are a lot of things that make Mr. Craig Young a good coach,  but these are just a few of them. He has high expectations, proud of our accomplishments,  and he makes swimming fun. For these reasons and more I picked him as my Educator of the Year because he might not be one of my academic teachers, but  I learned a lot this season from him, and I had fun doing it!