All Hands on Deck! Return of the Rangers: Alumni Swimmers as New Coaches

The 2023-2024 Redwood Swim season welcomes new leadership on the pool deck. With Rangers returning, the pursuit for excellence awaits. With each practice and meet, these new coaches are learning from current and past leaders in the swim community.

By: Donya Hassanshahi

As a kid, you have a different perception of the world. The bright pigmentation of the sun. The feeling that you are moving like the tortoise in the race of life. There were numerous instances to create and grow, yet the future was awaited more often than not.

Moving into your teenage years, things begin to regain perspective. You become a spectator in the race, waiting for your turn to implement the training you have been practicing. The ambitions you dreamed of during adolescence finally become a reality, but you aspire to pursue more—to do more.

As an adult, you embody the hare. Time is inevitable, though you’ve accumulated the pacing of the tortoise as you understand everything happens for a reason.

Redwood is known for the rigor associated with its athletics. Athletes are invested in ensuring their academics align with the hard work implemented on the field—or for swimming: in the pool.

For the 2023-2024 swim season, the Varsity Girls, Junior Varsity [JV] Girls, and JV Boys welcome new coaches. The twist is that these “new” coaches are returning alumni.

Coach Sophie Terry coaches the Varsity Girls swim team. Preceding her return, Coach John Buenafe was the Head Coach for 23 years before stepping down this season. He says, “Stepping down was very hard. I have coached something for the last 36 years. I believe the team is in great shape for the future. Coach Terry is doing a great job, and she has a wonderful resource in Coach Fuller. I will continue to be around the program in some capacity, as long as they need my help.”

Considering his departure from coaching, Buenafe says:

Terry began her swim career at the age of four, where she swam competitively for the next sixteen years. Her coaching experience spans since she was twelve, but this is her first year as a head coach.

Previously, Terry coached at another Visalia high school, El Diamante. Although she enjoyed their community and team, she says, “I loved my time at Redwood and I loved the athletics. Once I realized that coaching was what I wanted to do, it was always the dream to come coach at Redwood.”

As a swimmer, she says, “I had a super great coach and he was super inspiring. He pushed me harder than I ever knew I could go, and that helped teach me in life that I can just keep going and try harder. There was always room to improve.”

As a coach now, Terry says, “I think it’s great to be able to pass on the things that I’ve learned from coaches in the past, but also pass on my experiences that I felt being on a team that was league champions every year—that was super fun and being a part of something that everyone was super determined and worked super hard was beautiful. That’s the dynamic at Redwood.”

Crafting a positive environment is a necessary component to fulfilling a kind and united team. Throughout her swim career, Terry reminiscences over the lifelong friendships she’s gained.

“It’s huge to me that we’re creating a good team bonding experience. Always having teammates that you love and love to be around and an environment that’s super great is always important because it makes you want to show up and work hard for yourself and everyone else,” says Terry.

Accumulating the league championship, and winning at EYL [East Yosemite League], is an aspiration for Terry and her team this season, but she says her ultimate goal is for her swimmers to “like swim more than they have ever liked in their life, because swim is very easy to hate and I think a lot of people do swim just because they like water polo. I always liked swim, almost more than water polo, and I think it was because of my coach and water polo, so I wanted to provide that for Redwood swim.”

Her main resources of inspiration are derivative of her mentors: her mom, her Redwood swim coach, and her COS [College of the Sequoias] swim coach. Cindy Terry, Walter Bricker, and Ally Briano have contributed to Terry’s role in the swim community. “…Its really helpful to have [my mom] and ask her for advice…[Bricker] was the best swim coach and I hope to bring the same energy that he brought here. I still email him once a month and he’s always involved….[Briano] is always motivating me,” says Terry.

Dedicating yourself to sport for a season, let alone an extended period of time, requires the utmost passion. Terry says, “I just feel like I’m extremely passionate—some may say I’m too passionate about swim. I’m always thinking about swim and how [the team] can do better. [The team] make[s] swim fun for me and I’m so grateful that I have the group of girls that [they] are. [They] are the hardworking, sweetest, let-alone freaking smartest group of people I’ve ever met. Swimmers are always super hardworking and determined in everything they do in life, and I think [our swimmers] are the perfect example of that.”

Approaching the position as head coach, Terry had to find a person to coach the JV Girls team. After hearing about Ella Satorre, a Redwood alumni currently swimming at COS similar to Terry, she felt like it was a good match. “I heard good things about Ella from her past, kindness wise, and then I met her and I was like ‘Oh my god, she’s so sweet,’ like this will be a great environment JV wise bringing it up into varsity,” she says.

Coach Ella Satorre has swam since she was five and continues as of current. Her past swim endeavors include swimming for recreational city teams, Visalia Swim Club, and Redwood. Now, she is at COS and swims for their team. Her coaching experiences spans over a year, as she has been a coach at Visalia TNT and is doing private lessons occasionally.

When the position opened at Redwood, Satorre says, “I really do love coaching and what better place to coach than Redwood.”

Navigating her coaching style for the JV team has been something that Satorre considers at practice and at meets. “As a coach, I hope that I just get better at explaining techniques. I consider myself extremely knowledgeable, however I feel like my explanation are sometimes lacking in detail,” she says.

Throughout her years a swimmer, she has obtained a variety of coaching. “I’ve had so many coaches over the years and the ones at Redwood have really helped me regain my love of swimming and doing it competitively,” says Satorre.

Terry and Satorre have both been positively impacted and inspired by the COS swim coach, Ally Briano. She says, “She’s an absolute beast and legend and she has taught me so much. She’s helped improve myself as a swimmer and a person so much.”

The incentive for JV swimmers is to build technique to eventually become varsity swimmers. Satorre says, “I honestly don’t care if we win or lose meets, since the JV Girls team is so extremely small this year compared to previous years. What I hope for my swimmers is that they not only improve their technique, but also their times. I also hope that eventually they become fast enough to swim for Coach Terry on the Varsity team.”

Coach Seth Wheelock began his coaching career in 2016, where he then went to college after two years. During the 2021 swim season, he coached the JV Boys team until taking a break last year and now returning. When he was younger, he swam on city leagues and finally swam his senior year at Redwood, continuing throughout his two years at COS.

Although Fuller had asked Wheelock to return for coaching, he says that coaching has always been something he’s hoped to achieve. “I want to teach because I wanted to make a difference in some kid’s life. It’d be worth it all in the end, and coaching is the natural progressor of that,” Wheelock says.

As league has just begun, Wheelock says, “I love it. They’re incredibly irritating so often, but they’re great boys,” while considering his group of boys this season.

He says his incentive for being on the deck is to “…make sure that these boys improve in some way—be it in their swimming capabilities or just as people.”

Given the immense time Wheelock has dedicated to ensuring he and his team are successful, he says, “If I have one piece of advice for people its to make sure that you’re doing things because you enjoy them, not because you think that it’s important. The importance comes from enjoying things.”

Coach Eric Fuller has approached his 28th season of swim, as he’s been coaching since 1996.

Granted Fuller and Buenafe have been a dynamic-duo on the pool deck for over a decade, he says, “The interesting thing is that Coach Buenafe’s been around since his boy started swimming, 2002-2003, so we’ve established a long friendship…Whereas it stinks, it’s also nice to see some of the new blood come in.”

Poolside, Fuller has embraced the new leadership onboard:

The good thing is that they know and have seen what we’ve done before. [Terry] has a lot of mannerisms from Walter Bricker, her coach here, so when she pats somebody on the head, that’s a Walter Bricker thing that she picked up…It’s good to see them take on the responsibility of a team.

Coach Eric Fuller regarding relationships from the past translating into the present

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