This high school aquatics team welcomes all levels, and it’s one of the best around
Growing up in Juneau, Alaska, Aaron Hughes took to the pool as a boy. As with many competitive youth swimmers, the mileage began to take a toll. At a certain point, he wasn’t having fun with the sport any longer. He felt burned out.
“It was really filling my mental capacity, the pressures involved with it,” Hughes said.
When he was in high school, Hughes’ family moved to University Place. He figured he was done with swimming at that point, before being convinced to swim for Curtis High School and Vikings’ coaches Jim Baurichter and Mark Olson, affectionately referred to as the “Godfathers of Curtis swimming.” Baurichter founded the Curtis swim program between 1975 and 1976, with Olson serving as the program’s head coach from 1985 until 2012.
To his surprise, Hughes started having fun again.
“I fell in love with the program at Curtis,” he said. “Those coaches, they re-ignited that passion that I had.”
So when Hughes, going into his fourth year as the Curtis girls swim coach, had the opportunity to return to coaching at Curtis, he jumped at the chance. Hughes, also the pool’s program director, is complemented by head boys swim coach Dennis Piccolotto, who is going into his 18th year coaching in the program. The two work closely together with both swim teams, as well as the boys and girls water polo programs.
Under their guidance, Curtis has solidified itself as one of the area’s premier aquatics programs. The boys program has won seven Class 4A district titles in a row, while the girls team has won the last four district championships.
“There is just a legacy of expectation every year,” said Curtis athletic director Suzanne Vick. “They really have high standards for themselves and they work incredibly hard to get the best out of every athlete.”
Perhaps surprisingly, that success hasn’t come from simply prioritizing the training of the top-end club swimmers who come into the program, but rather an intentional approach of making sure everyone feels welcome.
FOSTERING AN INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENT
Piccolotto remembers swimming for Baurichter and Olson as an eighth grader in P.E. class. He felt comfortable enough in the water but had never swam competitively.
“I came into my freshman year as the weakest, most novice swimmer,” Piccolotto said, laughing. “I had no business being out there. But the encouragement and support from Baurichter and Olson, they took me in and always treated me like I was just as important as the state-level swimmers.”
By his senior year, Piccolotto was a state-level swimmer, representing the Vikings in the state swim meet.
The girls program boasts nearly 100 swimmers on average in any given year, while the boys program generally has between 50 and 70. Many of those have limited or no competitive swimming experience. For Hughes and Piccolotto, that’s exciting.
“We’ve had dozens — if not hundreds — of kids just like me, who came in here with zero competitive swimming experience but were treated just as the other swimmers, felt valued and respected and part of the team,” Piccolotto said. “We’ve had tons of kids who turned into state swimmers who came in with no experience.
“This program changed my life, just being a part of something. I learned a lot about goal setting, having a positive attitude, teamwork, dedication, commitment. These are lifelong skills I’ve used in college, in my personal and professional life.”
That emphasis on the whole individual, helping mold well-rounded student-athletes and genuinely good people, is at the heart of the program’s aquatics mission.
“We want everybody to feel welcome, to gain something from this program,” Hughes said. “To become a better human because of being a part of this. We don’t weigh any one athlete over another.”
The aquatics program is the biggest athletics program at Curtis High School. A non-cut sport, it has more participants than football, basketball, etc.
“We take pride in that,” Hughes said. “That’s something we never want to get away from: anyone that wants to work hard, be a good teammate, we want them here.”
The coaching staff views the results, the district titles and individual state titles that have come along the way, as a byproduct of that philosophy.
“We focus on individual growth as a human, focus on the process,” Hughes said. “Being a good teammate, showing up with the proper attitude, learning how to deal with failure. If we do all those things while providing good training, the performances will take care of themselves.”
The program hasn’t been able to welcome swimmers back to the pool yet due to the coronavirus pandemic. Hughes said he’s had to clean grout off the walls since the water has sat stagnant for so long. But the swim coaches have stay involved and connected with their student-athletes, even if they haven’t been able to gather or swim together. When the school shut down in March, Vick assigned a virtual Google classroom to every head coach in the athletics department.
“The aquatics program exceeded my expectations,” Vick said. “They were having Google meets, book studies, doing contests, challenges. Posting daily, inspirational workouts every day. Having that mindset of, ‘What are you doing, how are you getting better?’ All of our spring sports coaches did that. The aquatics program just crushed it.”
With the WIAA releasing updated return-to-play guidelines, Vick and the aquatics program are optimistic that high school kids will be able to return to the pool soon.
A DISTRICT-WIDE COMMITMENT
There aren’t many high school aquatics facilities like Curtis High School’s, a beautiful, expansive, well-lit pool with plenty of upstairs seating, giving spectators a bird’s-eye view of the action.
It’s a stark contrast to the majority of high school pools, which by and large are dimly lit, stuffy and cramped. And the district, as a whole, takes advantage of the facility that it’s spoiled with.
“The value we place on swimming, as an entire district, is unmatched,” Vick said.
Second graders, fifth graders and eighth graders attending schools in the district all take swimming classes at the high school’s aquatics center.
“It’s really, really fun,” Vick said. “It’s a philosophy and something the UP School District emphasizes: the safety of swimming, the ability to swim as a life skill.”
Parents get to watch their second-graders show off their favorite swimming skill during a culminating session. For many of those young kids, that’s where their love of swimming starts. When they get to the high school, Hughes and Piccolotto are happy to coach them, continuing serving as stewards of a proud aquatics program and solidifying the foundation set by Bauricther and Olson.
“The tradition and culture hasn’t really changed much since the 1970s,” Piccolotto said. “The times have changed, the sport of swimming has changed in general. But the way we go about our business and the culture of our program hasn’t changed one bit.”
This story was originally published October 15, 2020 at 12:41 PM.
