Asked to sum up the 2024–2025 SPIRE Academy Swimming season, Head Coach Thad Schultz didn’t elaborate much past the numbers, but he didn’t really need to. “We had a good year. We were about 92% in terms of best times. That about says it all, doesn’t it?”

Schultz is being modest. SPIRE Swimming has still more to celebrate at the end of this season, most notably a quintet of signings and commitments from the school’s matriculating swimmers: 

• Youssef Awad / Grand Valley State University
• Chloe Mullens / Indiana University at Indianapolis
• Arsenii Nikitin / Grand Valley State University
• Morgan Wagner / Georgia Southern University
• Dyara Tohom / Indian River State

The team traveled far and wide for meets this past year, but also had some great experiences in the home lanes of SPIRE. In November, the school hosted the Mark J. Braun Fall Classic. Per Schultz, this was a good time for his swimmers to have such a big event: “We had a lot of good things going for us throughout the year. The Braun Fall Classic is the perfect example of one such good thing. It was right before Thanksgiving. We had a lot of great swims there and, as a result, had a lot of great feelings coming out of that meet. It helped solidify things on a number of levels as we rolled into December and the holidays. The next big meet, The TYR Team Challenge, held in January in Orlando, was also a really good trip for us. I think it brought the team together just a little bit more and helped everyone get back into the right frame of mind after the holidays.”

Heading into the offseason, Coach Schultz will be busy, so busy that it’s almost inaccurate to call it an offseason. “First of all,” says Schultz, “we have swim camps every week over the summer. We’ll also be hosting sectionals here at SPIRE. Thankfully, I’ll have help. Cassian Csaszar, a student athlete from Germany who graduated last year, is returning to SPIRE to teach camps over the summer. It will be great having him back.”

As for next year, SPIRE Swimming is in growth mode. It’s a testament to the success the program continues to experience, at meets and in the number of student athletes it’s consistently sending off to collegiate programs. For Schultz, though, success is in the doing, and his plan for next year is to, essentially, keep doing what he’s been doing: “We want to keep posting great times. We want to move up in national rankings. That’s what it’s all about. That’s what brings the best student athletes here from across the country and around the world, and what helps put them on college rosters. As a sports academy, we succeed when our student athletes succeed.”