Sports : Coach of the Year: Rob Levis earns first award from new swim conference

Coach of the Year: VS swim coach Rob Levis received the award from the newest swimming conference.

Because Vinton-Shellsburg is the only Wamac Conference school with a swim team, the Vikings swimmers have joined a new conference known as the North Central Swim Conference.

At the inaugural NCSC meet last weekend, V-S came home with the Coaching Staff of the Year Award. Coaches include varsity boys coach Rob Levis, and girls coach Mike Dominick, who has filled in for the boys’ team when Levis has been out of town.

“Coaching is a great job, I wish I could make a full-time living at it,” says Levis. “I feel very strongly about the value of youth activities in our schools – athletics, choir, band, FFA, speech, etc. What kids learn in the classrooms is very important, but the life skills they pick up through activities are so critical in making them successful adults and productive citizens. Through these activities they develop confidence, learn the value of hard work, the importance of being a good teammate, how to work well with others, enhance communications abilities and a host of other skills that enable them to do great things with the information they have learned in class.”

Levis, who is the Deputy Director at the AmeriCorps NCCC campus in Vinton and a V-S School Board member, is quick to point out that the award is not for him alone, but for the staff of coaches.

“I have to give credit to Coach Dominick,” says Levis. “Mike is a technique expert and his work with the guys has been a huge help to them.”

Viking swimmers also deserve much credit for their efforts, says the coach.

“The kids do all the hard work. They put in the time and effort. All the coaching in the world won’t make people better if they aren’t willing to listen, learn and work hard. And these guys have been awesome,” he said.

That hard work has paid off in many new personal best times, and some team wins in meets.

“This season has been very rewarding for me because of the kids we have and what they have accomplished,” Levis says. “We’ve won a few meets but really it’s just been amazing to watch these guys become so much better and to see them realize that they are capable of so much more than they ever thought possible.”

There is no school size classification in Iowa high school swimming, so V-S often finds itself competing with much larger schools, many of which have collegiate pools as their practice facilities.

“Because there is only one classification in swimming our guys have to compete with all the big schools, so we get roughed up pretty good sometimes,” says the coach. “While we want to win every meet and every race, what really matters is that we have done everything we can do to be the best we can be and that the kids see themselves improving. If they practice hard, try to focus on proper technique, swim aggressively and still get beat by a faster kid all you can do is congratulate the other guy and go back to work at getting better. No matter how good you are, there is always someone smarter, stronger, faster or more skilled. We normally can’t control that. But what we can control is our effort. We may get beat because someone has been blessed with more talent, but we never want to lose because we were outworked.”

Levis and the Vikings will travel to Cedar Falls for the district meet Saturday at 12:30 at Holmes Middle School pool. Participants will include Cedar Falls, Waterloo East and West, Decorah, Marshalltown, Mason City and Grinnell.