Aquatomics Coaching Staff

Head Coach Rusty Bernstein send email

Los Alamos Aquatomics is pleased to announce that Rusty Bernstein is our new Head Coach as of September 1, 2004. He comes to New Mexico from Pennsylvania and is originally from North Dakota. Rusty has coached college, club, high school and Masters Level swimming teams for the past 23 years both here in the States as well as at the military base in Heidelberg Germany

Rusty has received several awards for his coaching abilities. He has a level IV certification from the American Swim Coaches Association (ASCA). Level V certification is Olympic level coaching. Coach Rusty graduated from Minnesota State University with a degree in Physical Education and did post graduate work at Ohio University. He is happy to be here in Los Alamos and is looking forward to coaching the swimmers with the Los Alamos Aquatomics team.

Rusty states his coaching philosophy with the following general thoughts:

	Swimmers need to look beyond the “Here and Now”. Always keep long-range goals in the back of your mind.
	Swimmers need to “learn how to swim” before being too concerned about how much or how intense they are training.
	Training sessions should challenge swimmers both physically and mentally.
	The main goal for 10-&-Unders is to have fun at practice.
	The coaching staff are the only individuals that should be coaching the swimmers.
	The team is always more important than one individual.
	First place or last place, individual improvement is most important.
	The overall experience must be enjoyable for the entire swimming family.
	There is no room for bad sportsmanship in our sport.
	Tell swimmers why they’re doing things, not just what to do.
	I prefer that swimmers don’t swim in the same events every meet.