Empowering Swimmers and Coaches: SwimRVA's Jonathan Kaplan,…
Send us a text Whether you’re a coach, swimmer, or simply a sports enthusiast, this episode will inspire you with insights into the transfo…
Jan. 3, 2025
Empowering Swimmers and Coaches: SwimRVA's Jonathan Kaplan, EP 267
Whether you’re a coach, swimmer, or simply a sports enthusiast, this episode will inspire you with insights into the transformative power of perseverance, innovation, and connection.
Dive into this episode as Jonathan Kaplan, the visionary behind SwimRVA, Rapids Swim Team shares how he turned a small swimming program into a thriving community of over 580 passionate swimmers. Discover the secrets to creating an environment where swimmers, from kids to adults, feel empowered, responsible, and excited to return to the pool. Learn how fostering fun and mentorship builds a lifelong love for swimming and strengthens communities.
What’s the secret to turning casual swimmers into lifelong enthusiasts? Join us to uncover Jonathan Kaplan’s innovative approach that blends fun, responsibility, and mentorship to create a ripple effect in the swimming world. From inspiring stories to actionable strategies, this episode is your lane to transforming the way you think about swimming, coaching, and building a vibrant swim community. Don’t miss it—dive in now!
Check our Jonathan's Inspiring Sports Nation Channel https://www.isnation.com/coach/642/bio
Email us at HELLO@ChampionsMojo.com. Opinions discussed are not medical advice, please seek a medical professional for your own health concerns.
Chapters
00:00 - Fun Swim Program Building
09:01 - Influences, Champions, and Passions
20:32 - Expanding Impact Through Innovative Coaching
Transcript
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So I'm doing an on-deck interview with Jonathan Kaplan.
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He is the head coach of SwimRVA the Rapids and I swim on and off with the SwimRVA Hammerheads, which is the master's program.
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So Jonathan and I have crossed paths at this beautiful facility, swimrva.
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It is just a stellar, unbelievable pool.
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It was the Olympic trials pool and Jonathan has built the program here at SwimRVA with these kids from Jonathan, is it true, from zero to over 500 now.
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Yeah, we started in 2018.
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We had zero swimmers on day one.
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We grew to about 288 kids in the first three to four weeks, which was quite remarkable, and now we're in year six and I think we've crested the 580 swimmer mark right now and hopefully growing closer to 600 soon.
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As someone who swims in the other pool because we have so many lanes here while you guys are swimming.
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It seems your swimmers really enjoy practices Like they.
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I'm in the locker room.
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I see them.
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I see them coming in and out.
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They seem to be having fun.
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What's the secret to these kids having so much fun in your program?
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Well, that's interesting.
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You say that because you typically get to see them in the morning yes, early, and it's not easy to have fun in the morning because, let's face it, waking up at 3.45 or 4 in the morning is not an easy thing to do, but for us it's.
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We find that it's more about the environment that you're creating at the practice and the fact that we don't actually have an attendance requirement, so we don't require the swimmers to be at any practice.
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That puts a little bit more back on the coaches to have to create an environment that the kids want to be a part of, and so we very much encourage the kids to cheer for each other, to get to know each other, to become friends with each other, be supportive.
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It's not always perfect, because teenagers are teenagers sometimes, but at the end of the day, they have an environment that they want to be a part of and they don't have to be there.
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And they're all there because they got the same type of goals.
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They all want to improve themselves, they all want to be faster swimmers, and so that makes the practices a lot more fun to be a part of.
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It reminds me a little bit of masters having fun, but that is so wonderful to see.
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Now one of the things we have a lot of our listeners are master swimmers.
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They're triathletes, they're adult swimmers and maybe they have kids that swim.
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So I know a lot of the parents who put their kids in swimming were swimmers themselves.
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Parents who put their kids in swimming were swimmers themselves Now.
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So when I swim in a USA meet and your team is there you have been so supportive of master swimmers being in a USA meet.
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What is your thought?
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Could we encourage other master swimmers to get in a USA meet?
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What would you say?
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Your experience has been watching my husband and I swim in multiple USA meets and you've been there.
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Your kids have been there.
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What's been your take on that?
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In your case it's actually twofold One, because when you are in the pool and some kids might be like who is that swimmer in?
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Or they might not understand or even realize that the senior age group is actually open, so you can literally be any age you want and some swimmers just they didn't even know that.
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It's not that they think an older person shouldn't be there, it's that they didn't even know if it was allowed, and that just remind them, like, how old do you think a lot of the Olympians are?
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Well, they're like 28, 32, 36.
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Yeah, okay, so if they were, they could swim in this meet.
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If they can swim in the Olympics, they can swim in this meet.
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But from your case, obviously you've reached very high levels and so I get to brag on you a little bit and they become a little bit more invested in your success and I'm like, yeah, she trains right down in the other lanes while you're practicing every single day.
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So that's really good.
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You're like the gateway for the kids understanding that swimming is not something that you just do until you're done with high school or you're done with college.
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And that very much is in line with the attitude that we take with coaching our kids is.
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We don't want our kids to be so grung down and they hate the sport.
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By the time they get to the end of high school and they're like I can't get far enough away from a pool, they have the term swammer.
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I've never liked the term swammer because it's like that's insinuating that you're not a swimmer anymore.
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But you can always be a swimmer.
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You just change your approach into what you want to get out of it as you get older.
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But I don't want to have kids going through our sport that think, once I'm done with high school, that's the end of it for me.
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I want them to see this as a part of the rest of their life and even competition can be a part of the rest of their life.
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I can tell you from experience because I've been that person swimming in the meet.
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It's really awesome for the kids to get to see people who just swim because they love the sport and they can connect with that and it just gives me an opportunity to remind them of why they're swimming in the first place.
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It's not only about the times, it's not only about the records or did you achieve your goal.
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It's about having a good relationship with the sport that is going to make you a better person and that literally never stops.
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Yes, we're so on the same page.
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I hate when somebody says they're retiring from swimming.
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You should never retire from swimming, it's just.
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It is a lifelong sport.
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Give us a little background on your swimming.
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You swam at Florida State.
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I did Okay, and then what has your trajectory of your swimming career been?
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Your own swimming, getting in the water.
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Yeah, so I learned how to swim when I was three.
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I grew up in Central Florida.
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I actually swam in the Rowdy Gaines Olympic Pool for my whole career.
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So, yeah, rowdy's from Winterhaven, florida, the same place.
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We went to the same high school and everything.
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So Rowdy's a really good friend of mine and he actually used to come down while he was doing masters and he would train with me while he was actually when he went to Japan and he broke every freestyle record and every world record for his age group.
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Yeah, I have some really good training stories with him when he would come down and stuff.
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But anyway, so I was very inspired by Rowdy at a young age.
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I met him when I was eight and he came to our swim team banquet and we've just been literally been friends ever since then.
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So I started swimming competitively at six and started to reach pretty decent high levels, probably top three or four in the state until I was 14.
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And I decided to step away from soccer for one year.
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I played soccer for eight years and I just stepped away for one year and I said you know what, I'm not leaving soccer, I'm just going to focus on swimming for one year.
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And my soccer coach was actually unbelievable and he was incredibly supportive of it, and I can go on and on about the stories about my soccer coach and the impact he had on my swimming career, but that's for another day.
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But anyway, that one year was really good.
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I ended up being ranked in the top six in the country for 13,.
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14 boys in the 400 IM broke the junior Olympic meet record for the state of Florida.
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So I had some really good swims and that just catapulted me.
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I was like I'll never look back with soccer.
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That was also around the same time, when I was about 14 to 15, when I pretty much knew that I wanted to be a swimming coach.
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I don't think I actually had made that official decision but looking back, I basically was a coach from the water with a lot of my teammates, not like in a bossy way, but in a just, in a supportive way.
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I just really I just loved watching my teammates succeed and that was really important to me to the point where I don't know you probably remember this, but we actually used to have to fill out our times on a piece of paper and turn it in to the meet and then they would create a heat sheet from that.
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There was nothing done online because there was no online.
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And I used to have all the swimmers from the other team.
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Even when I was 14 or 15, their parents would come up to me and ask me what their kids' best times were, because they knew that I knew all the kids' best times because I just love watching my teammates race.
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So then when I did eventually go to Florida State, I studied sport management because I knew I wanted to be involved in sports right from the get-go.
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I studied sport management because I knew I wanted to be involved in sports right from the get-go and I solidified, probably by my sophomore year, that I knew I wanted to get into coaching and I'd been coaching over the summers with my own team back home in Tallahassee when I was there.
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So I really started coaching at 18.
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And then when I graduated from Florida State, I knew for sure I wanted to coach.
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So I set it up so that I could get the graduate assistant job coaching at Florida State and this is back when graduate assistants could actually coach.
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So I was coaching.
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It was weird because I was coaching some of the swimmers that I swam with, but I was also coaching with the coaches who had coached me, but it was a great experience and I got my master's degree in sport administration and so having those two degrees has been perfect segue for coaching full time, because I literally use probably 98 percent of my degree both the degrees every single day, and I got too many college roommates and friends and stuff who got a degree in criminology and aren't doing anything in criminology or something like that.
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I'm not like that.
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I knew what I was going to do and I got into it from the get go and I use it every day.
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Gosh, I love that passion.
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That's really beautiful.
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Do you think that your soccer coach had any influence on you wanting to be a coach?
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Oh man, that's interesting.
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I've always thought so much about his impact on me as an athlete and just the person I turned into.
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I've never been asked that question before, but now that you ask it, I think a hundred percent, because the one thing his name is James Smith, just a phenomenal person and my head swimming coach, jim Grazier the two of them two Jameses, actually, but they were just very impactful on me wanting to be a coach.
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Because James Smith, my soccer coach, he just was exceptional about just making you feel really good about yourself.
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Even when I decided to swim only I would get a letter in the mail from him and it would just be this he would use like highlighter and it was just this awesome letter hey, you're number one, I really think you're just a great person.
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And he made me feel awesome about myself and so I think that's probably where I got the desire to make other people feel really awesome about themselves.
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And then Jim Grazier, who was my longtime swim coach as a kid.
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He was exceptional about teaching me how to do that in the swimming world, because he didn't grow up as a swimmer, he grew up doing other things and he became a swim instructor who became a coach and he's a phenomenal coach who never swam before, and so he had to learn a lot of different ways to get kids excited about how they feel about themselves in the swimming world, and so I really learned that from him too.
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That's beautiful.
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So in all these experiences you've had and I know just having known you for several years you have lots of fellow coaches that are high level coaches, Olympic coaches, and you have so much experience with success, what do you think some of the traits that champions share, that you see on a daily basis Not necessarily somebody who's gone to the Olympics, but just that these kids are really successful what do you see that those traits that they share are?
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That's a great question.
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I have been very fortunate over the years to have a lot of good experiences with Olympians, starting with, obviously, rowdy at a young age.
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I've got to coach several who went on to swim in the Olympics Florida State.
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I've had the pleasure of working with Townley Haas at Nova for a little while.
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I got to coach Charlie Swanson as his primary coach for a year.
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Love Tuna he's a great kid.
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He's not a kid anymore, he's a big, grown man, a big Olympian.
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But no, the thing that I've noticed over the years is they're not that different than everybody else.
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I think people have these assumptions that Olympians are this just magical human being who is flawless and they're just like, wow, they're so lucky that they're that talented and it's really never like that.
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Every now and then you'll meet an Olympian who they just have that persona and they're just like, yeah, there's something different about that person.
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But I've coached a lot of people over the years who are something different about that person feel.
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But they don't turn out to be Olympians.
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They're just great people.
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The thing I noticed about Olympians is that, on a more consistent basis, they're just willing to do the things that other people aren't willing to do.
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They're willing to do the extra dolphins off the wall when others are going to complain about it.
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They're willing to come into the practice when they might have a stuffy nose or they're a little bit exhausted when others would have easily slept in.
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That's the difference.
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And when you add up all of those small little increments over a lot of years and swimming is a repetitive sport over a lot of years that adds up over a lot of years.
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That adds up and it turns into become a gigantic chasm of a difference between your average swimmer and an Olympian, because the Olympian was willing to do it all the time and they just made it their habit.
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Oh, I love that.
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I love that.
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That really resonates with me.
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Is there anything that you that isn't out there in the public that may be a little insight into Jonathan Kaplan, like what?
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Maybe a hobby or something that you enjoy doing?
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I love.
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I just love diving into sports numbers in particular.
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I'm not a crazy math person, so don't get me into like calculus or anything crazy like that, but simple math I love and I love, just like, the beauty of sport.
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And so from as long as I can remember, since I was probably about 10 or 11, I collected sports cards.
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So I collect like baseball cards, basketball cards, football, and I took a long time off from the hobby and I actually just my best friend, who we've been best friends since we were six we actually met on the swim team, so you never know who you're going to meet, even when you're six years old and he had messaged me a couple of years ago and he said have you tell how much your cards are worth?
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I was like I haven't done that in a couple of decades, but let's go take a look.
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And it just got me remembering what I loved about the beauty of the pictures of the cards and the statistics that are on the back.
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And a lot of them will tell you their hometown or maybe a story about their journey and stuff like that.
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And I've always been fascinated with the journey that other athletes take to get to high levels.
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Because, like I was saying earlier, with the Olympians, like you think that it's this magical thing where everything works out perfectly and sports isn't like that.
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It's about the failures that get you to become successful, not the other way around.
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So I like seeing that story and then the cards are just like a way to capitalize on that.
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And a fun little side note my best friend, chris Bogey, and one of my other really good friends that I grew up swimming with in Winter Haven.
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His name was Dan Ketchum and Dan Ketchum went on.
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He and I would collect cards, we'd go to card shows and all this stuff.
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Dan went on to swim at Michigan, became NCAA champion and went and won a gold medal for the Olympics and the relay the 800 free relay.
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He was on the prelims of the 800 free relay and won gold medal.
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So my passion for sports still rooted in swimming one way or another, even my passion for cards.
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I love that, I just love that so where do you think you get this passion, man, the reason why I coach, and it's the cheesiest answer ever and I've said it a handful of times in interviews over the years.
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But I'm like, look, it's cheesy, but it's true.
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This is who I am.
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I've always wanted, for as long as I can remember.
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I want to have the most powerful impact on the largest number of people possible, and there probably are other avenues where I could maybe have an impact on more people than coaching swimming, but then I would lose the level of impact.
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So I just think that swimming is the one sport out of all sports that mimics the rest of your life.
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There's a lot that you're going to learn by being a football player, soccer player, tennis player, golf or whatever that are going to help you in the rest of your life, but I don't think any of those sports literally mimic the ups and downs that you go through, because you have to learn how to push yourself as an individual, but you have to do it in a team setting.
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Very few swimmers can start and finish their career by themselves and become successful, so you have to learn to work together as a team, but you're only as good as you work, very similar to when you go get a job or you have a boss or you start a business or something like that Marriage a lot of what you learn through the ups and downs of swimming helps you get through the ups and downs of marriage, because inevitably there are ups and downs in marriage.
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So I've been passionate about that and that's the reason why I chose swimming.
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At the end of the day, though it's personal, but I don't mind sharing because other people deal with loss in their life too.
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But for as long as I can remember, my parents told me at a young age that I had an older brother who I never had met and he passed away when he was only about 10 months old Obviously extremely devastating for my family and for my parents.
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But what that did is it put my parents in a situation to adopt because they weren't going to be able to have another child.
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That essentially wouldn't have the same thing happen and, as tragic as that is, they ended up adopting my sister and then, three and a half years later, they adopted me.
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It's the greatest thing that's ever happened to me in my entire life was becoming adopted.
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And if that had not happened?
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And Joshua, who was my brother.
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If he had not passed, I would have never been given that opportunity, and so, because I have that opportunity, I just can't imagine my life being anything other than I need to.
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Really, I need to kick the heck out of this life because I've been given this opportunity that essentially someone was sacrificed for, and so literally everything that I do, I'm trying to find the best way that I can have an impact on someone else's life in a positive way, and I'm doing it because of him season I've ever had in probably my whole swimming career, and you sat down with me.
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You're not paid to coach me.
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You sat down with me, you went over some splits, you've allowed me to use your resistance bands, you've just you've cheered me.
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I see, when I was in lane one breaking the 500 free national record, you were standing there with your arms in the air and I saw you and hey, I don't think I would have kicked it in on that last 50, which I needed.
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So it's choking me up to hear your story.
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It's just, it's really beautiful and you are making a huge impact and I love seeing the success of this program and in this facility and what you're doing and I can totally see why it's happening now.
00:18:28.119 --> 00:18:35.686
And then the last question we always ask is is there anything that I haven't asked you that you would like to share with our listeners?
00:18:35.686 --> 00:18:36.336
Could be anything.
00:18:36.577 --> 00:18:43.881
Yeah, sure, first of all, let me go back and say that it was my pleasure getting to watch you break those records, like it was.
00:18:43.881 --> 00:18:56.003
It's really inspirational everything that you've done and the fact that you're willing to do like we said earlier, willing to do things that other people aren't willing to do, and here you are, having the best swimming you've ever had later in your life.
00:18:56.003 --> 00:18:57.887
Like that's just an awesome lesson.
00:18:57.887 --> 00:19:04.017
So I love that you've got an avenue to share that with other people, because you're going to inspire a lot of people for a long time.
00:19:04.017 --> 00:19:05.160
So just wanted to say that.
00:19:05.160 --> 00:19:13.676
The other thing for me is that my this is something that I never thought would really happen.
00:19:13.676 --> 00:19:15.637
Like when you think of I'm a swimming nerd.
00:19:15.637 --> 00:19:43.421
That's through and through man I got, I can tell you some swimming stories and I know a lot of people and I've just been, you know, connected to the sport in such an intimate way for a long time senior coach for the first six years and I just promoted our amazing coach, blake Profitt, to be our head senior coach so that I can spend more of my time and energy as the head coach and the director.
00:19:43.421 --> 00:19:47.957
So it's very different than anything I ever thought I would be doing, because you think of a coach.
00:19:47.957 --> 00:19:53.037
You're like you just want to be on the deck and you want to get the recognition for developing the athletes.
00:19:53.037 --> 00:19:59.799
And I know coaches do that well into their 60s, sometimes 70s, and I think that's awesome.
00:19:59.799 --> 00:20:00.742
That's where they want to be.
00:20:01.395 --> 00:20:07.194
When I decided to make this shift, because it was for the betterment of the entire program, I had a lot of coaches.
00:20:07.194 --> 00:20:11.059
I asked several of my best coaching friends around the country so what do you think about that?
00:20:11.059 --> 00:20:13.182
And they're like are you going to be okay?
00:20:13.182 --> 00:20:15.484
Are you going to scratch the itch?
00:20:15.484 --> 00:20:17.467
Are you okay, not being on the deck as much?
00:20:17.467 --> 00:20:29.692
I'm not off the deck yet, but eventually we'll get to that point where I'm not really on the deck as much and I'm more okay than I ever thought I would be, because my group that I'm coaching now is the coaches.
00:20:29.692 --> 00:20:32.198
We got 27 coaches on this staff.
00:20:32.659 --> 00:20:59.732
So if I can coach 27 coaches to be better versions of themselves and they have the ability to literally impact hundreds of kids, then now I have the ability to impact thousands of kids and even if I don't directly work with every single one of them side note to that I actually do get to work with all the kids now, because at every at least once a month, I spend time with every single practice group and every single time slot.
00:20:59.752 --> 00:21:03.365
So I actually know the team better now than I ever have before.
00:21:03.365 --> 00:21:32.557
So I guess, like the lesson for that is, just because you're doing this right now doesn't mean that there isn't a different chapter where you can have a significant positive impact on others and I'm actually on Instagram a lot now, which is something I never thought I would do, and here I am sharing motivational Instagram reels and things like that that I never thought would have an impact, and I've literally get people from around the world reaching out and telling me how much they love the reels and stuff like that.
00:21:32.557 --> 00:21:34.442
So you just never know what's coming up.
00:21:34.442 --> 00:21:37.788
So be willing to change and alter what you're doing.
00:21:37.788 --> 00:21:39.319
Don't just do the same thing all the time.
00:21:40.221 --> 00:21:41.266
Wow, I love that model.
00:21:41.266 --> 00:21:45.824
That's very innovative and sounds like stuff that SwimRVA is doing here constantly.
00:21:45.824 --> 00:21:47.642
Thank you for spending this time with me.
00:21:47.642 --> 00:21:54.467
I know you have a meeting this morning at eight o'clock, so it's just been awesome and we so it's just been awesome and we'll continue to watch your success and really appreciate you.
00:21:54.926 --> 00:21:59.660
It's been such a pleasure chatting with you and, regardless of whether doing an interview, I look forward to chatting again next time.
00:22:00.040 --> 00:22:00.441
Thank you.
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