JDCHS swim coach is named 2012 Coach of the Year

Courtesy photo/JDCHS

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John Moran, Juan Diego swim coach, gives the girls a strategy during the 2011 state championship meet.

DRAPER — John Moran was named the 2012 Girls Swimming and Diving Coach of the Year by the Utah High School Activities Association. Moran is the Juan Diego Catholic High School girls and boys swim coach.

This award is the Utah High School Activities Association’s "way of thanking a coach on behalf of the many lives he or she has touched," said Robert Cuff, Utah High School Activities Association executive director in a Sept. 28, letter announcing the honor. The letter also said that "Moran exemplifies the highest standards of sportsmanship, ethical conduct and moral character and … he is a coach who enjoys success in his sport, but more importantly, he models positive behavior for his athletes to follow."

The award is sponsored in part by the National Federation of State High School Associations. Moran is now the national Utah high school representative in girls swimming.

"This is a big honor and a national recognition for John," said Chris Long, Juan Diego’s athletic director. "Just like all of our coaches, John puts in an extraordinary amount of time with the kids. He works with all levels of kids and takes some that aren’t necessarily gifted and makes them into good swimmers, which is the mark of a good coach. He is dedicated to the mission of the Skaggs Catholic Center and Catholic education in general, and he is in it for all the right reasons."

Moran was also awarded the 3A girls Coach of the Year by a vote of his peers following the 2011 state championship at Brigham Young University.

Moran, a graduate of Springfield College in Massachusetts, has been the coach at Juan Diego for the past 12 years. He is also Juan Diego’s director of Special Events and chairs the Skaggs Catholic Center Youth Activities Association.

The honor caught Moran by surprise, he said. "Swimming is a unique sport where there is more individual accountability than other sports might have," Moran said. "The kids are more in control of their own fate, but as a coach I am able to create an environment that allows them to set goals and to be able to understand deferred gratification where we work hard all year for something that is at the end of the season. I think, in a unique way, it helps foster self-esteem in the student because he or she is given a road map for success and for achievement. When they achieve at whatever level they might be at, they celebrate a feeling of self-worth."

Students put in an incredible amount of time into swimming, Moran said. The Soaring Eagle team averages 35,000 yards a week and they swim off campus at the Life Center in Sandy.

"We swim six times a week, and two days a week we do dry land exercises such as speed work and weight training," Moran said. "They see me giving that time commitment to them, but at the same time, they are spending that much time because they really want to make a difference in what they are trying to achieve and a payoff in their desired results. One thing that is unique about Juan Diego is we don’t get many kids who have been swimmers before they came to the school, and we’re able to develop them into swimmers."

That work has paid off: Last year, the girls freestyle relay teams set two state records and won state championships, with Kelsey Leeson, Class of 2012, taking two individual gold medals.