Although, when he introduces himself, he introduces himself as Coach Russell. When I first met him, I was expecting him to introduce himself as "First Name / Last Name". Even his email correspondence is Coach Russell. So we just referred to him as coach Russell.
There is a reason I'm doing such a long, detailed explanation of his involvement. I don't want to get him in any trouble for something he didn't do. I just find what Alice found out an interesting story about an interesting guy.
First off, he's old school. When Reid wanted to join, he gave Reid the "come to Jesus talk" and told Reid to "think about it first and understand it is a big commitment".
He doesn't suffer fools lightly and is proud of the fact that the Dolphins swim club is the best in Ontario and top 5 in Canada. Which is pretty amazing for a club of only 80 swimmers. Parents we've spoken to, that had their kids in other clubs, said this one is by far the best and their kids have improved immensely. Two of the coach's kids are elite level swimmers and one is even an Olympian.
When you meet the coach, he's an intriguing guy. He's probably in his late 50's. He has gold lower teeth and has an old school tattoo on his forearm . Reid even says he has a big mushroom tattoo on his chest.
Since we moved to Burlington, Reid has had some interesting experiences with Sports. The first hockey team he joined at 10 years old, he had a parent jump over the boards, grab him by his jersey and start yelling and shaking him on the ice after the game. He parent felt Reid cheep shot-ed his kid. They ended up banning the guy from the rink and police got involved.
So now back to swimming. Alice was googling to find out Coach's credentials and came upon a huge list of articles about "Cecil Russell" and his past. Click here to a link to one of the Articles and you can google more if you like.
So now Reid has another sports story. He can say he joined a swim club that had a more than interesting person involved with it. With all that said, I can't stress how much I like this guy. He has 6 kids, his wife is the head coach of the club and you can see his passion for swimming.
One thing that makes sense now is, within the first month of Reid joining the club, I got a call from him asking me to remove a video from my You Tube channel. He was concerned that it looked like he was coaching in the background, which he wasn't, he was just walking on the deck. He also didn't want the secrets of the type of training they do to be leaked out. The video was only about 20 second long.
At first I thought this is one crazy and paranoid guy, but now it all makes sense.
With all that said, it's too bad Reid didn't want to continue with the club and I'd have no problem keeping him in the Dolphins. As a matter of fact, I'd recommend the club to anyone. Reid says he would have continued with the club if the workout times didn't interfere with his "friend time" and when he gets to high school, if there is a swim club, he'd definitely join.