Big Plans Ahead For Growing Wellington Wahoos Swim Program Story by Sharon Robb Photos by Scott Fisher
When Rich Whalen was hired as head coach of the Wellington Wahoos swim program eight years ago, it was a homecoming. Whalen was first a swimmer for the original head coach, Hall of Famer Buddy Baarcke, in the late 1970s. Then in the 1980s, he was an assistant coach for Lui Echerri, the second head coach, from 1981-87 and again from 1991-94. Echerri retired in 2004, and Whalen was hired the following year.
Beach. He liked the idea of returning to Wellington to renovate the program. Whalen knew he had his work cut out for him when he returned to the Wellington Aquatics Complex, which serves children and adults of all ages.
“It was always like a home for me,” Whalen said.
“It wasn’t perfect, but we worked at it,” he said. “I took over at a bad time. The team was floundering after Lui retired at the end of the high school season. They didn’t hire a coach right away, and there were things that had to be done to make it a competitive program.”
A 30-year coaching veteran, Whalen built programs at Santaluces High School in Lantana, Lake Worth Aquatics and Aqua Crest in Delray
In recent years, the village remodeled the facility, improving it and making it more competitive with other swimming facilities in the region.
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August 2013 |wellington the magazine|
The facility added a scoreboard with electronic touch pads in 2010 and made the Olympic-size (50-meter by 25-meter by 25-yard) pool deep enough to host Florida Gold Coast swim meets, raised and widened the pool deck and installed stainless-steel gutters to absorb waves. Whalen, a teacher at Wellington High School for 20 years, knew that with the families in the village, it was only a matter of time before the program would flourish once again. “I knew it was a good area, it always has been, with a lot of families and kids,” said Whalen, who teaches American government, economics and history. “It was just a matter of getting everything back in line and picking up where the