Every great team needs a great leader, and Bolles swimming is no exception.
Jon Sakovich began his career at the Bolles School swim program in August of 2000. He is currently the head swim coach and Aquatics Director as well as the director of the internationally renowned Bolles School Swim Camp.
Sakovich didn’t get his start swimming laps in a training pool.
“My mom and dad started a swim team on this small island,” Sakovich said. “So when we did our training, it was either in a hotel pool or in the ocean.”
The unconventional training yielded exceptional results as Sakovich went on to represent the Northern Marinas Islands at the South Pacific Games, Pan Pacific Games, and the FINA World Championships.
His personal success also yielded an Olympic berth in 1988 when he represented Guam and came into contact with the head coach at the University of Florida.
Sakovich then enrolled at UF, where he didn’t have to train in a hotel pool anymore.
He does admit there were some times when he wanted to quit and times when he didn’t feel that he even liked swimming. However, he persevered, set high goals for himself, and was able to propel himself to a high level.
Sakovich earned All-American honors by finishing in the top eight at NCAAs, won National titles both in the pool and open water, earned a bronze medal while representing the USA at the 1995 Pan American Games, and represented Team USA at the 1996 Pan Pacific Championships. He narrowly missed qualifying for the US Team for both the FINA World Championships and the Olympic Games.
Whenever athletes express interest in quitting training or giving up swimming altogether, Sakovich, with his personal experience in this situation, knows exactly what to say to them.
“There are normally two reasons why an athlete wants to quit,” Sakovich said. “Reason number one is that it’s the wrong sport for that particular athlete, but that’s really rare. Reason number two, and by far the biggest one, is that the athlete doesn’t feel that they have any long-term goals or sense of purpose in the sport. It’s the same thing when you’re in school; you don’t just want to do busy work. You need to have a sense of purpose, and so if an athlete expresses that they want to quit, we try and set more goals for them and remind them that they are working towards a specific purpose.”
Sakovich’s swimmers have achieved success at all levels of the sport. He has coached numerous NAG Top 16 athletes, High School All-Americans, Junior National and Senior National qualifiers, and Olympic Trials qualifiers. He began his coaching career at Gainesville’s Florida Aquatics before being named Clearwater Aquatics’ Head Age Group Coach, a post he held for 4 years prior to his move to Bolles.
Being a freestyle distance swimmer, he said his favorite stroke to coach is freestyle, although he admitted he may be a little biased.
How does a school like Bolles stay constantly dominant in the sport? Sakovich said the key to success is high expectations.
“We have high expectations for our athletes, but we also teach them to have high expectations for themselves,” Sakovich said. “We don’t expect every kid to become an Olympic athlete, but we do expect everyone to push themselves, set challenging goals, and give everything they have to achieve those goals.”
“I think one of the misconceptions about Bolles is that we only produce fast swimmers,” Sakovich said. “That isn’t true. We have athletes from all levels, from the Ryan Murphy’s to the kids you’ve never heard of. It’s all about teaching kids about swimming and everyone sharing their passion for it. It takes all kinds to make a team.”
However, many of his athletes do end up becoming Olympic athletes. Since 1972, Bolles has sent over 50 athletes to the Olympics for swimming, and thirteen of those have medaled for a total of nineteen medals. Six of those medals were won this past Olympics in Rio.
The biggest motivator for Sakovich isn’t the medals or the glory, however.
“My favorite thing about coaching is getting to watch these kids grow up,” Sakovich said. “(With) high school kids, it’s so much fun to watch them improve and go off to college and then come back years later and hear about their successes, especially when they come back and they remember certain things we said or things we did. It’s definitely the most rewarding part.”
ITG Web Content
Bolles Swimming: Jon Sakovich Leads Team Toward Continued Greatness
Written by Kim Hoy
Photo by Aaron Musgrove
