Car­o­line McDer­mott, Head Swim Coach, Owner

• Piranha Aquat­ics Head Coach
• Salem High School Head Coach
• Lit­tle Pira­nhas Learn to Swim Acad­emy Owner
• ASCA Level 2 Cer­ti­fied Coach for Age Group and Junior College
• Tidal Waves Sum­mer League Team: Salem Loca­tion Head Coach
• 2009 Lib­erty Mutual Ohio Respon­si­ble Coach award for state of Ohio
• Cer­ti­fied Double-Goal Coach for the Pos­i­tive Coach­ing Alliance
• Mem­ber of Amer­i­can Swim Coaches Association
• Mem­ber of Amer­i­can Learn to Swim Teachers

Past Coach­ing Experience

• Piranha Aquat­ics (for­merly Salem Area Swim­ming) since April of 2008
• Beckley-Raleigh County YMCA; Head Coach/Assistant Aquat­ics Direc­tor. 5 YMCA Zone Qual­i­fiers, 1 YMCA National Qual­i­fier, 53 team records set
• 2007 Uni­ver­sity of Texas Long­horn Swim Camp Counselor
• 2007 WV South­ern Zone Team Assis­tant Coach
• Aqua-Darts USA Team: Head Coach; 2 Gero­gia State meet qualifiers
• Dar­ton Col­lege Interim Head Coach: 6^th place over­all fin­ish at NJCAA National Cham­pi­onships, 11 NJCAA All-American Indi­vid­ual and Relay Honors
• 2002, 2003, 2004: Trum­bull Coun­try Club Sum­mer League Coach: 14 team records, two indi­vid­ual YSL Cham­pi­ons, Female Swim­mer of the Meet at the YSL All-Star Pentathlon

Edu­ca­tion

• BS Early Child­hood Edu­ca­tion, Baldwin-Wallace College
• Pur­su­ing Mas­ters of Sports Lead­er­ship at Duque­sene University

Coach­ing Education

• 2009 USA Swim­ming Regional Coach­ing Clinic
• 2008 ASCA World Clinic
• 2006 East­ern States Age Group Clinic

Past Swim­ming Experience

• Salem High School: State Qual­i­fier, first ath­lete to earn a var­sity let­ter in swim­ming from Salem High School, 4-year let­ter winner
• Pen­guin Swim­ming (USA team): Zone Qual­i­fier, QUAD Meet Qualifier,Team Record Holder
• Baldwin-Wallace Col­lege: 4 school records, All-Conference swim­mer 10x, 2001 OAC Con­fer­ence Cham­pi­onship Team, two con­fer­ence records, achieved top-10 times in school his­tory in 8 events. All-OAC Con­fer­ence Aca­d­e­mic performer
• 2005: Nation­ally Ranked in the breast­stroke with United States Mas­ters Swimming

Out­side Interests

• Reading-anything and everything
• Piano-both play­ing and teaching
• Rollerblad­ing, bik­ing, kayaking
• Master’s Swim­ming
• Pho­tog­ra­phy and Mixed Media Art

Gina Latessa is enter­ing her sec­ond year as our vol­un­teer assis­tant coach. Her respon­si­bil­i­ties mainly include fill­ing in for the head coach in case of ill­ness or absence, but she will be on deck at prac­tice and meets on occa­sion. A for­mer com­pet­i­tive swim­mer her­self, she is fully cer­ti­fied by USA Swim­ming as a Coach.

House of Speed Cer­ti­fied Trainer

Leslieann Strain has been a com­peti­tor since the age of 8, par­tic­i­pat­ing in the very com­pet­i­tive field of dance and gym­nas­tics with the trav­el­ing team of Sny­ders of Alliance, Ohio. At West Branch High School, Leslie became one of the lead dancers in the Schools kick line Jazz ensem­ble. When Leslie was not danc­ing, she com­peted on the High School track and field team help­ing her team earn points in the Shot put and Dis­cus events. She also par­tic­i­pated in var­i­ous run­ning events.

After com­plet­ing High School, Leslie con­tin­ued with her love of sports and ath­letic train­ing by study­ing exer­cise sci­ence at Kent state Uni­ver­sity. Leslie is cur­rently a stu­dent at Kent State Uni­ver­sity where she is work­ing towards a bach­e­lors degree in Exer­cise Sci­ence, due to grad­u­ate in the spring of 2012. It is through this aca­d­e­mic dis­ci­pline Leslie has learned var­i­ous tech­niques to help ath­letes improve his/her per­for­mance on the ath­letic field.

Leslie is also work­ing towards a cer­ti­fi­ca­tion in ath­letic train­ing through the Amer­i­can Col­lege of Sports Med­i­cine. In her free time Leslie uses her knowl­edge of per­sonal train­ing to com­pete in var­i­ous 5ks and Triathlons.