Coach replacement not easy to find | Manawatu-Wanganui News | Local News in Manawatu-Wanganui

It's been three years of triumphs big and small for Special Olympics Wanganui swimming coach Melanie Miller, but she's leaving to focus on her studies - and she's proving difficult to replace.

Mrs Miller, who moved to Wanganui six years ago from England, said she first became involved with Special Olympics through her husband, who worked with the swim coach before her.

With 30 years of swimming experience, and previous experience working with people with special needs back home, at the coach's request for help, she soon started working with the Special Olympics swim team as an assistant coach.

After the coach was involved in a serious accident a few months later, she was asked to step into his position, having already established herself with the swimmers.

Now, three years later, she is in the last year of a Bachelor of Nursing degree at UCOL, working two part-time jobs, coaching for the Wanganui Swimming Club and looking after three teenagers at home. She needed to let something go so she could concentrate more on her studies, she said.

It was an agonising decision, and she has given up her role with a lot of regret, she said.

"It's such a positive organisation to be part of. The ethos is what you can do, their ability, not their disability."

She had been pretty lucky in her time as coach, seeing athlete Sam Donaldson go on to beat his personal best by 30 seconds and win the first gold medal of the Special Olympics Summer Games in Athens last year in the 800m freestyle swimming.

A day later he collected a second gold, this time in the 1500m freestyle, despite having his goggles slip off at the race start.

She was proud of Sam and all the hard work and training he had done with both Special Olympics and the Masters Games, but it was also the little things that made her proud.

Seeing someone who was petrified of deep water going in where they couldn't touch the bottom, or completing a two or four-length race for the first time, she said.

"They take longer to learn things. It's the pride you get when they finally get it, and it's the pride they get as well."

With Mrs Miller stepping down, the voluntary position of coach needs filling urgently before competition season starts in April and Special Olympics Wanganui are looking for someone with some experience in swimming and/or coaching.

Two key attributes to being a Special Olympics coach were patience and imagination, she said.

They didn't always understand things the same way other people would, and a coach had to know they weren't going to get instant results.

The focus was getting each swimmer to do the best they could do - and some of them could swim better than people who swam every morning, she said.

"They really try hard, and they are a great bunch of people to work with. When you get the rewards, they are huge."

A group of about nine swimmers currently train once a week, one hour from 6pm on a Tuesday night at the Splash Centre, but the training time could be changed.

The athletes range in age and ability from gold medallist Sam Donaldson to a six-year-old and a nine-year-old who were just about swimming a length of the pool with floaties.

When competition season started, they had five or six competitions that needed to have transport and entries arranged, and one Sunday every five or six weeks was spent attending them.

There was a former athlete who had become an assistant to the coach, and Mrs Miller said she was willing to come and help with the transition for a few weeks. There were also some training modules available.

As for Mrs Miller, she's not leaving completely. As a qualified time keeper, she'd be there for the April competitions, she said.

Anyone interested in volunteering to be the team's new swimming coach is asked to contact Joan Gill 06 3438279.