Thomas A McRae
Head Coach
Coach Tom graduated from Ohio State University with a Physical Education degree specializing in developmental motor patterns in children. He was Assistant Coach for the Ohio State Women’s Swim Team in 1988-90, and Assistant Coach for the Stanford Women’s Swim Team in 1990-91. Coach Tom has worked with several 1992 & 1996 Olympic medalists from Stanford, and coached swimmers from the Mexican National Team for the 2000 Olympic Games. He is a Certified Level 4 member of American Swimming Coaches Association.
In 1990 he started as
an Age Group Coach for SOLO, and became the Head Coach in 1992.
Unlike many other Head Coaches, Coach Tom works with all levels of
swimmers. His daily activities includes being in the water teaching
the youngest swimmers, helping Age Group swimmers with their
strokes, and running practices for National level
swimmers.
Coach Tom is also the Head Coach for Menlo-Atherton High School’s swim team. In 2006 the MA girls finished undefeated in the PAL league and finished fourth in CCS. Four girls made All-American for the second year. On the boys side there were great improvements moving into the second place in PAL with boys finishing in the top 16 in CCS. The size and depth of the team has really been tremendous the past five years that Coach Tom has worked with the program.
Following his older brothers to the pool put Tom on his first swim team at the age of four. As a high school swimmer things really took off as a member of the Greater Columbus Swim Team. He was a walk on swimmer at Ohio State as a freshman, which lead to coaching the sport. As a masters swimmer Coach Tom broke the World Record in the February Fitness competition in 1995 and again in 1996 swimming over 725,000 yards in a month. The purpose of which was to show the swimmers that if they wanted to achieve success they needed to work toward a goal. For Tom that turned out to be 25,000 yards per day which took eight hours.
