Three weeks ago, Troy Larson hired a new swim coach for the Iowa Lakes Swim Team. Kaden Huntrods, who has been working as a graduate assistant coach for South Dakota State University’s men’s and women’s swimming and diving program talked about the process of how it all went down.
“After I finished my position at SDSU, during the job search process, a friend of mine named Eden Miller, who is an official for USA Swimming. I’ve had to work with her for a lot, because I used to work with an age appropriate for her, and she called me up and said ‘Hey, I don’t know if you’ve seen this job position posted, but Iowa Lakes Community College is not too far from where you are right now. The coach there had just recently resigned, but he still likes to be involved there, would you be interested in applying for it?’ I first saw the job posted there before, and at first I was a little nervous about the enrollment part, because I wasn’t really involved in the enrollment portion, and when I met them they said that, ‘Hey, we will work with you and we will make sure you get educated with that side.’ I would then come in, apply for the job, and then I met with people on the admissions team from Estherville and Emmetsburg. They were absolutely wonderful to talk to as a group.”
As being a new coach, there are possibly short and long term goals when it comes to being a coach. Kaden Huntrods would talk excitedly about his short and long terms, not lonely for himself, but for the team as well.
“I would like to get us to the forty number on the roster. That would probably be two or three years down the road, but I always like the idea of having challenges. A lot of people like going into a program that is absolutely perfect and that has been winning championships forever, but the problem is if you come into a program like that, there’s nowhere to go. You can’t build, they’ve won championships for 23 years. You can’t just build off of that with just one championship. We have 12 students now on the roster, so it’s a little harder to place at Nationals and it’s harder to win at meets, so our long term goals is to increase the numbers, we increase how fast we go at meets, and we just slowly build that success up, so it’s nice where you can just start and build. A short term goal would be just having the guys place third at nationals this year. The girls side I would like to have all personal bests at nationals.”
Troy Larson would talk about how he knew that Kaden would be the right candidate for the job, “I think it’s just going through the process of having the application come in and go through our policies and then the communication starts to happen and then you start to talk to each other quite a bit of times on the phone. I think probably also think when he also got to campus and when you get to spend a day with him, you get a better feel, and then just reaching out to people and the coaching profession that had been around him whether it’s been other club coaches or whether it was his bosses at South Dakota State University or wherever, you talk to as many people as you can about the individual as well. I think the combination of those processes just to get to know him on the phone, getting him here on campus, putting him through the interview process, and just reaching out to people that know him. You feel like at the end of that process, you got a pretty good feel about what the guy is all about.
As you can see, everyone is looking forward to having a new coach like Kaden to represent the Iowa Lakes Swimming team. There are many reasons like new goals, new players, and new accomplishments to achieve as well. He has many goals to accomplish not just for himself, but for the team as well. They have 6 returning sophomores from last year and six new freshmen joining the team. Their first event will be Jan. 11, at Luther and Loras Double-Dual in Dubuque, IA.
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