Clark and Kaylin Garner Flip Swimming to Alternative in Mississippi with HubCity Aquatic Club

Two former University of Alabama swimmers, Clark Garner and Kaylin Garner, got down to make an affect within the water in southern Mississippi, an space the place swimming’s presence is missing, by founding their very own swim membership, HubCity Aquatic Club.

The two University of Alabama alums met simply two weeks into their first 12 months in Tuscaloosa. Both competing between the lanelines for the Crimson Tide, every boasting embellished careers; Kaylin, formally Kaylin Burchell, notably was a two-time SEC Champion, successful each the 100 and 200 breaststroke occasions in her senior season, later ending runner-up within the 100 breast on the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships in 2015.

The Mississippi native Clark and the Kentucky-raised Kaylin tied the knot in 2016, a 12 months after they graduated from faculty, and determined to maneuver to Mississippi, the place Kaylin had been accepted into nursing college, and Clark had been accepted into an accounting program on the University of Southern Mississippi.

“We actually really were not planning to be involved in swimming,” Kaylin mentioned in an interview with SwimSwam. “Yeah, not at all,” Clark added.

Their return to the game happened when a non-public college coach stepped down, and the Garners stepped in.

“They begged us to coach this little private school, and it just turned into this whole thing. Like we had 10 kids, and then 20 kids,” Kaylin mentioned. “And then the parents asked us to start a club team, and we just became interested in swimming again.”

Kaylin and Clark started their very own swimming enterprise below their LLC, Garner Swimming, which supplied swim classes and superior coaching for youths within the space. With that got here the creation of HubCity Aquatic Club in late 2022 to early 2023, the place Kaylin and Clark will not be solely coaches, however membership founders as nicely.

“If you had told us what all it entailed before we started it, we probably wouldn’t have done it,” Clark mentioned. “Now it’s like our baby, and we’re so invested.”

Kaylin echoed related sentiments to her husband, sharing her love for the group that their group has introduced collectively, saying the “families and these kids that we have on the swim team, they love to swim, they love us, and we love them. It’s been a great experience.”

The group initially operated out of a hospital-owned Wellness middle pool, with lanes solely three and a half ft deep.

“So we practiced in a puddle for a couple of years,” Clark jokingly mentioned.

HubCity Aquatics now operates out of a number of swimming pools, together with the pool on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi.

“The tough situation is travel.. Getting two hours of consecutive pool time is difficult,” Clark mentioned. “We practice four days a week… Two of those days, we only get an hour, but it’s better than what we were dealing with.”

“One of the biggest challenges was trying to find a pool that was not just going to give us an 8-9 pm slot to practice,” each Clark and Kaylin mentioned. “The politics in swimming is hard; neither of us realized how political some of this is, even on the coaching side, so we’ve had to learn some new stuff,” Kaylin added.

HubCity Aquatic Club at present has 100 swimmers, with about 50 of them competing for the group. There have even been problems with group dimension, as they’ve needed to put individuals on ready lists to hitch, partly as a consequence of restricted pool area.

The group can be one among only a dozen groups within the Mississippi Swimming LSC.

Kaylin even added that the recognition of different sports activities within the state of Mississippi has made it onerous for the group to maintain boys on the group persistently.

“Especially in South Mississippi, we lose them to football, baseball, and basketball, which I’m sure around the country that’s a thing, but I feel like especially in the South,” Kaylin mentioned.

The dimension of the group, whereas spectacular, is secondary for the Garners; the affect the game has on the swimmers takes middle stage, particularly within the space’s swimming panorama.

“We want kids to love the sport… and there was not much of an opportunity for that to happen here,” Clark mentioned. “Some teams around here require swimmers to be able to swim all the strokes and distances in certain times, but we’ll take anyone who’s not scared of the water.”

Another hurdle that the Garners have discovered is simply getting swimmers comfy sufficient to compete.

“The hardest part is teaching a kid how to swim, getting them comfortable in competition. And trying to teach them to race, once they figure that out, it’s easy,” Kaylin mentioned.

HubCity Aquatic Club additionally incorporates a very youthful roster, with the oldest swimmers being simply 14 years previous.

“The oldest kids we have are 14, about to turn 15, so we don’t have any senior age swimmers,” Kaylin mentioned. “Which is great because I would say most of our young kids who have started with us have stayed with us. We have developed these swimmers.”

The group additionally has a detailed and constant relationship with the Garners’ alma mater, Alabama, with the Crimson Tide teaching workers even working a swim clinic for HubCity Aquatic Club in May.

“Margo Geer and I grew up racing each other, and she was about a year ahead of me. She and I talk on the phone, and we have the support of the staff, and that staff has our support,” Kaylin added.

Though each Clark and Kaylin have years of expertise in swimming, this journey takes them again in a method, again to the bottom degree of age-group swimming and membership groups, however this time with quite a lot of information and prior expertise.

“I think it gives us a good perspective to put ourselves in the kids’ shoes. When it comes to setting realistic goals, when it comes to race disappointment and just kind of being able to see it through their eyes too. And also as parents, I feel like that gives us a good perspective.” Kaylin mentioned about issues she realized as a high-level swimmer and now as a coach.

With the roots of HubCity Aquatic Club being in swim classes (that are nonetheless supplied to any and all ages), the membership and program vows to not shrink back from giving anyone the prospect to get into the water, particularly with the variety of drowning deaths in Mississippi.

“Mississippi is very behind in most things in swimming, I didn’t realize how many adults and kids Mississippi would drown if they fell in the pool of like four or five feet of water,” Clark mentioned. “I would say probably one out of every three people I meet do not know how to swim, and there’s just no access to it either… we want to be able to do that.”

“Just taking a kid to the pool and exposing them to that environment could save their life,” Clark later added. “I’ve had like a six- or seven-year-old kid show up to swim lessons and they’re just terrified. We have had to talk for at least 10 minutes to even get them to put a toe in the water… but building that awareness could potentially save their life.”

When requested about how they might outline their efforts and the state of the membership 5 years from now, each Kaylin and Clark had the identical reply: influencing lives.

“It’s just nice to be an influence on these kids’ lives, especially to be another support system outside of the pool,” Kaylin mentioned. “It’s just nice to be involved in their lives, and anything positive that Clark and I could have done is great.”

“We could be having the worst day of our year and then we go to practice and see all the kids and get to coach them for an hour or two hours, and it’s always nice,” Clark added. “So, just any positive impact that we can have on those kids’ lives. I mean, we have kids all the time tell us they want to be a swim coach one day, and that’s the compliment we want to hear.”