Page 11 - Menlo Magazine: Winter 2018
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MENLO MAGAZINE
Kelly Crowley
Upper and Middle School Swimming Director and Head Coach, Middle School Basketball and Water Polo Coach
I am, among other things, an athlete. Always have been and hopefully always will be. My childhood heroes were all sports icons: mostly Olympians (Mary Lou Retton, Bonnie Blair, and Mary T. Meagher), 49ers, and Stanford women’s basketball players. I just loved sports and wanted to be an Olympian and a professional athlete.
I started summer-league swimming in second grade after failing to advance with my friends to the next gymnastics class on account of my “funny little arm.” Still, it
didn’t really occur to me until middle school
that my arm presented some unique challenges, not the least of which was that many coaches just assumed I wouldn’t
be one of their stars, so they mostly ignored me.
A long, crazy path led me to the Paralympic podium in swimming and professional cycling, and along the way,
I gave up a career in public policy before
I happened into coaching. Though I never set out to be a coach, I quickly realized that a lifetime of being a competitive athlete under dozens of coaches taught me everything I needed to know about the kind of coach I wanted to be.
The rst day I walked on the pool deck as
a coach, my goal was to give every single swimmer equal attention. I knew what it felt like to be ignored, discounted, and underestimated, and I wouldn’t allow that to happen to a child on my watch. I want every athlete to feel important, to know that, no matter how they arrive at the start of a season, I’m here to help them improve at something.
The sense of self, the con dence, and the courage I discovered through sport carry through to everything else in my life. It’s not the medals or national titles or prizes that matter. The process is the thing that stays with you. The ability to identify where you started, how far you’ve come, and what you did to get there— that is where the deepest satisfaction lies. Hopefully, I’m teaching my students
those lessons.
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