We’ve had some questions about where the swim school originated, so we thought we would bring you up to date with where we started and also what our swimmers, coaches and staff have been doing.

The school was started by Dean Greenwood who began swimming himself in a cold outdoor school pool when he was about 5 years old. His father, Ian had been one of the support swimmers for Barry Davenports' famous Cook Strait Crossing, so there was a bit of a swimming background in the family.

After learning to swim, Dean got involved in competitive swimming and SurfLifeSaving in Wellington. He then travelled to Dunedin to swim with Duncan Laing, where he won national swimming and surflifesaving titles and represented NZ in swimming, surflifesaving and marathon swimming.

After retiring in 1987, He began coaching with Duncan and then with Hilton Brown in 1989. This was followed by success coaching some of NZ’s top swimmers.

The move to help Hilton Brown with the swim team at the Roskill Club coincided with Hilton being appointed the head coach for the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland.

It was a rather daunting task in the beginning for a young coach, as many of the swimmers in that team were former team mates of Dean’s, but it worked well and he went on to develop many of New Zealands top swimmers in the 90’s, with athletes Trent Bray and Mark Weldon competing at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Along the way other swimmers on the team excelled at national level, Winning many New Zealand Titles and setting National Records. The team also included Aaron Bidois who medalled at the 1996 ParaOlympics in Atlanta.

In 1995 the opportunity to start his own swim school came up, and Dean moved to the Mt Eden Pool just up Dominion Road. While setting up the swim school Dean was still producing top swimmers who were representing NZ. One of these athletes, Dean Booth, went on to win gold in world record time at the Sydney ParaOlympics, and Dean was awarded the Coach of the Year for Disabled Swimmers. By this time the workload of managing a swim school and a competitive program was becoming unsustainable, and led to a move away from competitive coaching with more emphasis being placed on, initially the swim school and then pool management as Kelston and New Windsor pools came on line in 2004 & 2006 respectively.

The role of Head Coach was left in the capable hands of Glenn Hamblyn, who has since produced top swimmers for the Laser Mt Eden Club, including Orinoco who swam in Beijing in 2008.

Head Coach Glenn Hamblyn had already had success at international level, with two young 18 year olds Orinoco Banse and Kurt Bassett. The boys were selected to represent New Zealand at the Youth Olympics held in Mexico. Glenn was appointed team coach. The highlight of the international event was Gold medals won by both Orinoco and Kurt in their respective events, the 50m freestyle and the 200m backstroke. This was a huge thrill for the Swim School as both boys had developed their racing skills under Glenn over a number of years, and were now ranked No.1 in the world for their age.

The competitive side of the swim school continued to grow with the development of a competitive swimming squad based at the Kelston Pool under coach Josh Munro, a former national level swimmer himself. Starting with a small group, Josh provided an opportunity for the swimmers who had developed their swimming skills within the swim school and were looking for another challenge. This young group of swimmers continues to grow with some exciting talent starting to emerge.

In the meantime the swim school went through a restructure with the aim of providing more support for the growing number of staff and clients. Site managers were introduced to take responsibility for their individual sites rather than depend on a central form of management.

Care was taken to select people with excellent customer service skills, as they would be the face of the swim school in their areas.

Around this time, and driven by the instructors, the swim school developed a more diversified approach to its holiday programme, with the introduction of a water safety strand. This allowed the pupils to learn valuable water safety skills, as well as learning to swim. The program was priced extremely competitively so that it was available to a broader clientele. The first year was very successful with all available spaces being filled. It soon became apparent that the swim school was going to have to keep the program fresh as pupils returned each holidays. This led to the further introduction of the snorkeling strand, which introduced young swimmers to the skills and thrills of swimming underwater. Once again the demand was overwhelming, with both pupils and instructors having a great time learning and teaching these alternative aquatic skills.