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My name is Baylee Munro.

I am 29 years old, and I’m a professional swim coach.

I have dreams of coaching at the highest possible levels, and this is my blog.

 

Today I’m going to give a brief overview of my journey in coaching, from being a volunteer assistant in the early-mid 2010s, to the full-time head coach and general manager of a club and university team from 2023 onward.

 

I first got involved in coaching during my time as a swimmer with the Nanaimo Riptides Swim Team (NRST), where I was helping out with the younger kids while I was a swimmer there. Secretly, I always had an interest in coaching for the simple reason that I enjoyed it, and I thought I could be very good (or even the best) at it.

 

My decision to pursue coaching was solidified across a few random moments.

 

Near my last year of university, I had a meeting with an academic advisor about switching around some courses. As someone who was on honour roll for 4 of my 5 years while swimming full-time, I asked them what the cutoff would be to graduate With Distinction. This is the top 20% of students, so it’s competitive, but not really 1% elite. I asked this knowing that my GPA was a 3.58 out of a 4 point scale (6.86 on a 9 point scale), which in Computer Science, is usually enough to get your resume into “the good piles” of 3.5+, as I understood it. I was a decent student, especially considering the 20+ hours of training per week, plus meets. She kindly informed me that the cut-off for distinction was above an 8, to which I basically said, “welp”, and thought if I wasn’t in the top 20% of compsci students, I could probably still be in the top 1%+ of swim coaches.

 

In doing my diligent research, I found the following Coach Profile of Canadian Olympic coach Randy Bennett.

 

https://coach.ca/news/london-2012-coach-profile-randy-bennett

 

Randy unfortunately passed away in April 2015 (right at the end of my first year swimming with UVic), but in the preceding 8 months, I had seen him on deck dozens of times (often arguing with our coaches over lane space lol) and knew he was a passionate guy and a very strong leader.

 

The part that was most relevant to me was as follows:

 

“I stuck with coaching because the business side of coaching really appealed to me. If you run a successful club, you can make a good living, and that appealed to me. I was thinking about becoming a teacher, but by being a coach, I wasn’t restricted by a curriculum, which I really enjoyed.”

 

Not to say I had dollar signs in my eyes (no swim coach really does), but the idea that I could make a good living, and leverage some of my skills I was learning in my Business Minor, was reassuring.

 

He also added:

 

“Coaching is truly a wonderful life. Enjoy it. Very few people get to have a job as fun as ours. We’re pretty lucky and I think sometimes we lose sight of that.”

 

I was sold.

 

This was only incrementally more due diligence that I had done in choosing my college major of Computer Science, which apparently was done based on liking money and free time, as per the following flowchart.

 

 

There was also one conversation with my high school driving instructor, when I floated the idea of doing a kinesiology degree instead of computer science, and he looked at me like I had three heads. The meatheads of the BodyBuilding.com forums were right - computer science was the way to go.

 

But for now, I was coaching in the compsci closet to keep everyone from thinking I was crazy, and still have a solid back-up plan.

 

My first paid gig was as a Junior Coach with the Nanaimo White Rapids Swim Club (NWRSC), where I was recruited by my friend and mentor Gareth Saunders, to coach during my summers away from varsity swimming at the University of Victoria. I still fondly remember finishing the first day of practices, part of a hectic try-out week where we try to properly place 150 swimmers in their summer-long groups, based on 5 practices over the week.

 

As the sun was going down in Nanaimo, we moved off deck into the Lance Room, which was basically the head coach’s office (although the board that meets there would tell you it was theirs). I looked at our whiteboard on the wall and saw 150 magnets, each with a different swimmer’s name and their age division in the league.

 

We moved these names around like generals in a war room seizing a border, complete with the shouting (sorry: respectful discussion) that results. I was hooked. Coaching was a way to turn swimming (which was enjoyable but could be rather sterile) into a fun and strategic activity where planning and action pays off.

 

A little bit about myself - my Myers Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI) tests consistently as ENTJ, and my Enneagram as 8w7. Although not perfect, I enjoy these models for their ability to provide some explanatory power for people’s actions and motivations.

 

Apparently I share the same exact type as Steve Jobs, Walter White’s Heisenberg, and Peppa Pig. Adjacents include Genghis Khan, Napoléon Bonaparte, and Gordon Ramsay. So somewhere between a British chef and a 4-year old pig is where you can find me.

 

So with that context, perhaps you can see the unique appeal of taking something you really love (swimming), and combining it with planning and strategy to make a positive difference in the careers of others. A lot of people have a lot of reasons why they coach, but I honestly just really enjoy it.

 

As the famed ENTJ 8w7 Heisenberg said:

“I liked it. I was good at it. And I was alive.”

 

And I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.

 

I strongly believe that you as a coach have a duty to give the athletes your best. I absolutely believe that good coaching makes a big difference, and sometimes it can even make “the” difference in the trajectory of an athlete and the opportunities that they get access to along the way. I have no respect for lazy coaches. Swimmers only get one career, much like how we all only get one life, so why waste it?

 

Any day you’re spending not enjoying your life or working towards your dream is wasted. Grab the steering wheel and drive.

 

I did 4 more great years with NWRSC, moving up through the ranks to become a Senior Coach, then an Assistant Head Coach, and finally the Head Coach for 2 years. Along the way I made a ton of friends and always gave the swimmers my best.

 

During my last few years of university I went hard on my coaching certifications, and ended up landing a full-time job at NRST, the club I grew up with. I practically bled blue and gold (as well as blue and white from NWRSC), so I was very excited. I stayed for the following 2 years (into and out of COVID) before moving out to Edmonton with the Olympian Swim Club (OSC).

 

I had some good opportunities while I was there to learn more about how to run a club, and soon enough in 2023 I was hired by the Regina Optimist Dolphins Swim Team (RODS) and the University of Regina (UofR) as the head coach and general manager of both the club and the university team. One Olympian (and many other accomplishments) later I am heading into year 3. That takes me to where I’m at today.

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed this first blog post - I hope to give you an honest high-level look at the sport, the journey, and the people in it, from a different perspective that hopefully includes some humor and wisdom. Thank you very much for reading - see you next time.