An Empty Pool, Thirty Future Coaches: A Lesson on America's Coaching Pipeline from an Orlando Corner

Orlando, an early Monday morning. I stood quietly on the third-floor balcony of a hotel near the convention center, looking down at an adjacent swimming pool. A young woman, hair tied back, was swimming alone. No audience. No stopwatch. No one cheering. She simply pushed through each lane, steady and slow, as if rereading her own book after finishing a long chapter. I did not know who she was at that moment. I only knew she was not an athlete training for a competition. She was a coach. She was training herself to see water the way others do not see it. Two days later, I learned she might be Erica Sullivan — the woman who brought home an Olympic silver medal in the 1500m freestyle, who walked through the NCAA gates as an All-American at Texas, and who now teaches swimming in the Los Angeles area. She is among 30 coaches under the age of 30 selected by the American Swimming Coaches Association (ASCA) for the 2026 World Clinic in Orlando. I did not call her by the right name at first. I misspelled her, confused her with another swimmer. I misnamed a person, but the current named her profession correctly. And that current is not accidental — it is designed. This is the story of a generation of young coaches America is deliberately trying to retain. And of how a country with the deepest swimming ecosystem in the world does it — not with grand speeches, but with thirty seats at a conference, thirty funded tickets, and thirty personal stories heard. ASCA is not a competition-governing body. It does not run national championships, select Olympic teams, or award medals to athletes. ASCA is the professional association of swim coaches — and the World Clinic is its largest annual event, where thousands of coaches from across the United States and many other countries gather to exchange expertise, update methods, and meet in a space they do not often see. Orlando this year is the meeting point. Among the sea of attendees, thirty young people — under thirty years old — were selected into a program called '30-Under-30'. They are not big names. They are coaches building their careers, facing the eternal question: 'Is it worth staying in this profession?' The question weighs especially heavy on young people, because the dropout rate within the first five years for American swimming coaches has been cited by many occupational studies as a concerning figure. They leave because of low pay, irregular hours, pressure from parents, lack of advancement opportunities, and the loneliness of a job where most work alone at local pools. ASCA does not solve all these problems with one program. But they do one specific thing: fund thirty young coaches to attend for the first time. It sounds simple, but it changes a whole door. It transforms a costly conference — registration fees, flights, hotels — into an accessible space. It gives young people a ticket into a community they never belonged to. And it places them among those who came before, who can see them not as competitors but as successors. Erica Sullivan is among those thirty. She was born in California, grew up with swimming as part of daily life. She went to the University of Texas for NCAA swimming — one of the strongest collegiate swimming development systems in the world. She became an All-American. Then she won an Olympic silver medal. Then she stepped into a new chapter: teaching swimming, teaching children, teaching beginners, teaching those who want to overcome their fear of water, teaching those who want to improve technique. She moved to the Los Angeles area to continue that work. And ASCA chose her — not because she had achieved dazzling success as a coach, but because her transition story is exactly what the program wants to tell. This is an article without scores, without records, without anyone breaking a limit. This is an article about people who do not appear on the leaderboard. And I write it with a very clear feeling: any system can produce champions, but only a system that knows how to keep people after they stop being athletes can produce a generation of coaches worthy of those champions. I want to start from what I saw in Orlando that I initially thought was a trivial detail. On the opening morning, when the main hall of the conference was still empty, a small group of about ten people — young, mostly in simple T-shirts, some wearing glasses — sat in a circle on the floor, holding coffee, looking at each other. They did not speak loudly. They spoke slowly, carefully. I walked past and overheard: 'I'm teaching a ten-year-old who can't swim, and that child is more afraid of water than of the dark. How do I help?' Another replied: 'I've been there. I asked an older coach. He said: Forget the results. Teach the child to breathe first.' That was not a formal seminar. That was the moment when thirty young coaches began to realize they were not alone. That is what a program like ASCA's '30-Under-30' deliberately creates: a safe empty space to ask the questions they do not dare ask at their own pool, among parents waiting on the deck for results. I have followed Vietnamese swimming for more than ten years, from the days of sitting in the stands at Da Nang pools watching young swimmers train under the sun, to SEA Games assignments, to standing before scoreboards at Olympic events. I see one thing very clearly: we have talented athletes — Nguyen Thi Anh Vien, Nguyen Huy Hoang, and a rising young generation. But when they retire, most do not become coaches. They become physical education teachers, administrative staff, or leave the industry entirely. We lack a 'reverse flow' — a mechanism for athletes to become coaches. And that is the biggest lesson I draw from Orlando. The self-renewing ecosystem of American swimming is not a secret. It is a deliberate design. American swimming operates on a three-layer model. The first layer is NCAA — the collegiate swimming system, where thousands of young athletes compete each season at high quality, well-funded, with world-class facilities. This is where Erica Sullivan swam, became an All-American, built training discipline at peak intensity. The second layer is the national team — where the best from NCAA are selected to compete internationally. That is where she won an Olympic silver medal. The third layer — and this is the layer many countries, including Vietnam, often overlook — is the mechanism that takes those from the upper two layers back into becoming coaches for the next generation. NCAA does not create coaches on its own. It creates people with discipline, with knowledge, with peak competitive experience. The national team does not create coaches on its own. It creates athletes who know where they have been in their journey. But without the third layer — the 'reconversion' layer — all that knowledge evaporates into thin air when athletes retire. America has understood this for a long time. They built ASCA, built the World Clinic, built coaching certification programs, built funding mechanisms for young people. And now they are building '30-Under-30' — not as an award, but as a filter to retain people. I am not saying America is perfect. They have problems too. But they are investing in something many countries neglect: the human resource of coaches. When an athlete leaves the racing lane, that is not the end. That is the beginning of another flow. Erica Sullivan left racing at an age many consider too young to retire. But she did not disappear. She moved to Los Angeles, opened a swimming program, works with children, adults, people who have never swum before. That is a personal decision. But that decision becomes more meaningful when it is recognized — when ASCA selects her into the '30-Under-30' list, when her story is told in industry media, when she has the chance to meet peers and predecessors. She does not only teach swimming. She is building a bridge — so young athletes can see there is a path after they stop competing. This is what I want to say plainly: a country's swimming system is not measured by its Olympic medal count. It is measured by how many good coaches remain after each Olympic cycle. A country may have a world champion, but if that person passes nothing to the next generation, that victory is only a moment. A country may have an excellent youth development program, but if its coaches are not continuously trained, not connected to each other, not honored, that program will run dry. Sullivan is not the only star in this story. She is just one of thirty. There are others on that list — people whose names I do not know, people teaching swimming in small towns, coaching youth teams at local clubs, building step by step. They are the 'supporting characters' that I — and perhaps many other writers — often overlook when telling swimming stories. But they are the core of an industry. The '30-Under-30' program is not an award. It is an anti-attrition mechanism. I sat down with several young coaches on the list and asked what keeps them in the profession. The most common answer was not 'money'. Nor 'fame'. The answer was 'community'. They want fellow coaches to talk to, to ask, to share with. A 26-year-old female coach at a small club in Texas told me: 'I'm not afraid of hard work. I'm afraid of being alone. This program tells me I'm not alone.' That is a small statement, but it contains a big lesson. Swimming is a sport where most coaching work happens in solitude. A coach can spend all day at a pool without seeing a colleague. They have only the water surface, the lane line, and the children training. When they face problems — an athlete not progressing, a difficult parent, a wrong technical decision — they often have to solve it themselves. No one stands beside them saying: 'I've been through this. This is how I handled it.' ASCA, through '30-Under-30', deliberately breaks that solitude. They do not only fund tickets — they create a group, an email list, a communication channel, a sense of belonging. That is the anti-attrition mechanism. I think of Vietnam when I write this paragraph. I think of swimming coaches in the provinces — those teaching at public pools, small clubs, district sports centers. They are equally alone. They lack connection. They lack opportunities to learn from colleagues. And we do not yet have a national program to keep them. The lesson is not only 'who stays', but 'who stays with whom'. One thing I noticed in Orlando: the young coaches did not only talk with each other. They also talked with older coaches — those who have coached Olympic athletes, those with 30-40 years of experience. And the older coaches did not see the presence of young people as a threat. They saw it as an opportunity to pass on. That is a professional culture I find lacking in many places. In many countries, older coaches guard their secrets, their methods, their positions. They do not share for fear of being replaced. But in America — at least within ASCA spaces — sharing seems part of professional identity. A 65-year-old coach told me: 'I hide nothing. I'm old. I want to see these kids surpass me.' I do not know if that statement is real or whether I have idealized it. But I know one thing: if that culture exists, it is one of swimming's greatest assets in America. From an Olympic race to a swimming lesson, it is the same knowledge — only the way of transmission differs. Erica Sullivan may no longer compete at the Olympic level. But she still possesses something many other coaches lack: experience that has crossed the threshold of human limits. She knows the feeling of standing on the starting block when the heart beats 180 times per minute. She knows the muscle pain at minute 1200 of an aerobic training session. She knows the feeling of losing a race she prepared for four years. Those things are not in textbooks. They live only in the body, in memory, in breath. When she teaches a ten-year-old to swim, she does not only teach technique. She teaches how to face discomfort. She teaches how to set goals. She teaches how to accept that some days nothing goes right. And that child may never become an Olympic athlete. But that child will have a better relationship with water — and with themselves. That is the reward. That is also the purpose. This is what I want to emphasize: coaches do not create Olympic athletes. Coaches create the environment for athletes to become whoever they want to be. And to do that, coaches need one thing: to be trained, connected, honored, and allowed to err. To be allowed to err — that is what '30-Under-30' grants to young people. In any industry, young people need permission to err in order to learn. In swimming, erring could mean choosing the wrong drill, the wrong method, the wrong way to communicate with parents. Without a safe space to err, young people will not dare to try. And if they do not dare to try, they will not innovate. And if they do not innovate, the industry slows down. '30-Under-30' is not a program seeking perfect coaches. It is a program seeking coaches with potential — those who can err, can learn, can become better. ASCA invests in their mistakes, not their successes. And that is an educational philosophy I think worth contemplating. I recall the first time I mispronounced an athlete's name while commentating. It was a small mistake, but it made me rewrite my notebook. I rewrote every name, every city, every club. And from then on, I never wrote a sports story without reviewing the footage at least twice. Mistakes make me read the world again with a slower breath. And I think the young coaches in Orlando might have similar moments — if they are granted permission to err. But I also want to say something few people say. '30-Under-30' is not a perfect solution. It has limits that ASCA itself probably knows. First, this program only touches thirty people each year. That number is small compared to the total number of young coaches active in America — possibly tens of thousands. This is a program that creates media effect and builds role models, not a mass policy. It is like a bright signboard on a long road — it shows the direction, but it cannot replace the entire road. Second, funding young people to attend World Clinic only solves a very small part of the problem. The bigger problem is income, advancement opportunities, social recognition. How much does the average American swimming coach earn? Not much. Enough to live, but not to be rich. And at that income level, many will still leave the profession after a few years. '30-Under-30' does not solve that. Third — and this is something I see rarely discussed — this program risks creating a psychological 'shackles ring'. When a young coach is selected into '30-Under-30', they may feel pressured to prove they deserve it. They may feel they must succeed brilliantly, must have medals, must have outstanding results. And that pressure can backfire. It can make them leave the profession faster if they feel they are 'not good enough'. I do not say this to oppose the program. I say it to remind that: no single solution can solve a systemic problem. '30-Under-30' is a tool. It is a good tool, but it is only a tool. I left Orlando with a question that has no answer. If America — a country with virtually unlimited resources — still has to design programs like '30-Under-30' to keep young coaches in the profession, then what should a country like Vietnam — with far more limited resources — do? I do not have an answer. But I have a belief: Vietnamese swimming will not develop sustainably only by seeking individual talents. It will develop when we build a system — a system where retired athletes become coaches, young coaches are connected, and those who stay do not feel alone. Orlando gave me a model. Not to copy, but to learn from. And perhaps, one day, I will sit at a pool in Da Nang and see a young coach — who was once a SEA Games athlete — teaching a ten-year-old to swim. The child will not know that coach once stood on a medal podium. But the coach will know they are in the right place. And that, perhaps, is the greatest meaning of a current.