DADS ON DECK PAT MURPHY BY ANNIE GREVERS Did you ever have to fight the urge to “coach” Ryan? No. I didn’t swim competitively growing up, and I didn’t feel I knew enough about training young swimmers. My children were also blessed with having extremely talented coaches. Their first club coach, André Salles-Cunha, developed my children’s love for the sport. I remember watching a swim practice when Ryan was about 7. André was teaching Ryan underwater dolphin kicks. Ryan figured out the movement pretty quickly. André explained to Ryan that he wanted him to keep developing his underwater kicks in practice, but that he wouldn’t introduce it into his races until he was older. I thought that was so insightful of André and one of the reasons why Ryan’s underwaters are strong today. When Ryan was in eighth grade, he began to swim for The Bolles School that was led by Sergio Lopez-Miro and a strong supporting cast. Ryan was coached by Christian Bahr and Jon Sakovich his first year and by Sergio beginning in high school. The coaching staff was selfless, focusing on the current and continued progression of the swimmers and, thus, maintaining their passion for the sport. Never once did our Bolles coaches talk about individual accomplishments. If hard work and planning happened to culminate in a national age group record individually or for relays, or a national high school team title, that was icing on the cake. For Ryan, becoming a University of California-Berkeley Bear was by far the best choice he could have made. Dave Durden and Yuri Suguiyama are extremely talented and disciplined people who do a phenomenal job of developing young college-bound swimmers into mature, responsible, respectful, self-starting, outstanding human beings and swimmers. What sticks out as the highlight of Ryan’s swimming career to date? Olympic Trials was so competitive and exciting. For Ryan to make the Olympic team—it was his life dream. To do so, he had to beat the best in the world. Moving forward to the Olympics and having the meet of his life— winning three golds and setting Olympic records and a world record—I will never forget. The race that sticks out the most is the medley relay for a few reasons: 1. Ryan got USA off to a huge lead with his world record-breaking time in the 100 backstroke leg; 2. Cody Miller holding his own against the insane breaststroke swimming of Great Britain’s Adam Peaty; 3. The thought that this could be Michael Phelps’ last competitive race, crushing the fly leg; and 4. Nathan Adrian securing the gold and Olympic record with a dominating freestyle leg. .