Athletics
Coaching Update smith
Athletic director Tim Holley ’77 recently announced head coaching changes for the water polo and wrestling teams for the 2011–12 season. Vaughan Smith, an Olympic swimmer in 1988 and a former collegiate water polo coach, has been named Gilman’s varsity water polo coach. Smith succeeds Laura Coffman, who will remain with the team as an assistant coach. Bryn Holmes, a national prep champion in wrestling at McDonogh and an All-American faceoff specialist in lacrosse at Maryland, has been named the head coach of Gilman’s varsity wrestling team. Holmes, the 2010–11 Cooper Teaching Fellow, teaches in Gilman’s Middle School. Smith, who assisted with Gilman’s water polo and swim teams this past year, was most recently the men’s and women’s water polo coach at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pa. He also has been the boys’ water polo coach at The Latin School of Chicago. As an athlete, Coach Smith’s accomplishments are varied and prodigious. He was a swimmer for the 1988 Zimbabwean Olympic Team that competed in Seoul, South Korea. He is a 1991 graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he was a standout swimmer; he was inducted into the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003. Smith earned a Bachelor of Science degree in kinesiology from UIC. Swimming was just one of a handful of sports in which Smith excelled. In 1987, he was the MVP of the International Youth
holmes
Water Polo Tournament in Berlin. That same year, he was a member of International Rugby Tour teams in Northern Ireland and Wales. Along with his new duties as head water polo coach, Smith will continue to assist with the swim team and with the Mariners Swim Club based at Gilman. Holmes, a 2006 McDonogh graduate, was a team captain for the varsity football, wrestling and lacrosse teams as a senior. He was named the Baltimore Sun 2006 All-Metro Athlete of the Year and a first-team All-Metro and all-state pick in all three sports in 2006. As a wrestler, Holmes finished with an impressive 162–19 prep record, including a school-record 114 wins by pin. He was a national prep champion in the 152-lb. weight class in both 2005 and 2006 and the MIAA and state champion in that weight class in 2004, 2005 and 2006. He then played in 62 games as a faceoff specialist and short-stick midfielder for a Maryland lacrosse team that reached the the NCAA tournament in each of his four years. Holmes, who won better than 55 percent of his faceoff attempts in his four years, was a team captain for the 2010 Terrapins. He graduated from College Park in 2010 with a degree in communications. An assistant coach for the Gilman wrestling program in 2010–11, Holmes will take over the head coaching position from Henry Franklin ’87, who will remain with the program as an assistant coach. Franklin was Gilman’s varsity head coach for nine seasons.
spring 2011
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