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Meadowbrook Woods Makos
2008 Coaching Staff Head Coach: John Gullickson Coach John is a swim coach for the Occoquan Swim Team (OCCS), a year-round USA Swimming club. He is also an assistant coach at Bishop Ireton High School and a teacher in Northern Virgina. Coach John swam backstroke and butterfly for the James Madison University (JMU) club team. Coach John was born in Central America and adopted by an American family. He was raised in the Mount Vernon area of Virginia. From the age of 5, he grew up swimming in the Northern Virginia Swim League (NVSL), with his older brother as his coach. He swam in the Dominion Country Club League until he aged out at 18. At the age of 11, he began USA Swimming year round as a Fort Belvoir Shark. He swam in High School for Mount Vernon and West Potomac. He majored in Kinesiology for two years before switching to Religion Comparative Studies; he received a B.A from JMU in 2007. John marched trumpet in the JMU Royal Dukes. Coach John fell in love with coaching in the summer of 2004 with his first job as the Head Coach of the Mount Vernon Yacht Club. Since then, he has coached summer swim teams each summer, including Pinecrest, Pinewood Lake, Veteran's Park, and most recently the Dale City Frogs. While a student at JMU, he was an assistant coach for two years with the Harrisonburg High School and Valley Area Swim Team. Assistant Head Coach: Lauren Patch Coach Lauren will be a junior at the University of Rhode Island and has been on swim teams for 12 years. She started swimming for the Braemar Blasters and then joined the OCCS year round team. She also swam for Stonewall Jackson Highschool. Lauren has been lifeguarding and teaching swim lessons for the past 6 years. She lifeguarded and taught at Splashdown waterpark for 2 years and for the past 3 years has lifeguarded for the Town of Falmouth beaches in Cape Cod, Mass. While guarding on the beaches, Coach Lauren also taught lessons, and by her second year was a head instructor. At the end of every season, Lauren took her kids to a swim meet that was between all of the beaches in the area - they have yet to be defeated! Lauren has also been teaching under Nancy Gagnon at the Freedom Center for 4 years and continues to teach there when she at home on breaks from college. Lauren taught at the University of Rhode Island aquatics center for a year as well. Swimming is something very close to her heart and she really enjoys coaching kids, taking them to swim meets, and watching them improve. Home |