PCST Welcomes Phillip Wood to Our Coaching Staff!

Phillip Wood Becomes Newest Member of PCST Full Time Coaching Staff!

With seven years of coaching experience under his belt already, Phillip Wood brings a tremendous wealth of knowledge to the Panama City Swim Team.  Throughout the years, he has worked with various levels ranging from the younger age group swimmer all the way through the most experienced senior level athlete.  Some of his greatest accomplishments have come with his most recent venture with the Hoover Blue Thunder Swim Team (aka HBT), while also previously building numerous top level swimmers with other Southeastern Swimming teams such as Magic City Aquatic League (MCAL), and Memphis Thunder Aquatic Club (MTAC).  He will be directly in charge of various groups at PCST including our new Masters Program, and the Summer Splashes Summer Team, while also assisting with our Tsunami Age Groupers and Seniors.

While studying Management Informations Systems at the University of Memphis, Phillip worked as an Age Group Coach for the Memphis Thunder Aquatic Club.  He was intimately involved in the complete set up and development of the organization as it was built into a 501.c3 program.  From 2004-2008, he went to school while helping build MTAC into the powerhouse program it is today.  Looking to improve his coaching experience upon graduation, as well as to move back closer to his home town of Birmingham to be with his family, Phillip became the Head Senior Coach with the Magic City Aquatic League.  There he was responsible for the development of a sound physiological season plan for the seniors that would help their elite level swimmers set and achieve goals at levels they had never before reached.

After a successful year and half stint with MCAL, Phillip moved over to Hoover Blue Thunder in 2009 where he became the Assistant Coach and main Age Group Coach for the highly successful program.  Coaching under Head Coach, Rick Moulton, he was primarily responsible for the top level 10-14 year olds and has produced many Southeastern Championship Top 8 finishers.  With the success of his age groupers, HBT not only grew to win the Medium Team division at Southeasterns, they even moved up to the Large Team division.  With all of the work he has done over the years, Phillip has produced multiple National Top 10 Age Group swimmers, earning him an ASCA Level 3 certification already!

Although his resume speaks for itself, and he has a heart warming personality that exudes his love for swimming and helping others, I can tell you from experience that Phillip's thirst for swimming knowledge is by far his best quality as a coach.  Each time I have spoken to him over the years, he has always been eager to learn, study and research more.  He has grown to understand the ins and out of the sport of swimming at a far greater level than most young coaches his age, but has also acquired the most important lesson a coach can learn; "never stop learning".  It is for this reason that I know the addition of Phillip is a fantastic one for the Tsunamis.  He will bring passion and energy into an already strong and committed program, which will almost certainly help PCST rise to levels never before reached!

Coach Phillip will be joining the Tsunamis on Monday, March 12th.  He will be at the Southeastern Championships this week in Knoxville, TN to complete his final season with HBT.  After a week or so to pack and wrap things up in Birmingham, he will arrive in Panama City Beach ready to start his duties.  First on the plate will be a week of getting our long awaited Masters Program underway while assisting me with the National Team preparing for Junior Nationals.  After the PCST week off for Spring Break has concluded, he will begin his 2 month "get to know the team" coaching plan.  He will spend time with every single group on the team so you can get to know him and vice versa.  Once the summer rolls around, Phillip will be coaching many of our Age Group Development swimmers as well as the Masters and assisting with the Seniors.  He will also be our brand new Summer Splashes Director.  So now you can see why it is so important for him to get to know everyone. :)

I hope you will join me in welcoming Coach Phillip with warm wishes of a long a prosperous career here in Bay County!

CATCH THE WAVE!

Coach Jonathan