Myra Jean Nelson
Natatorium Age Group Coach
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Myra "Mic" Nelson - Age Group Coach
(Natatorium)
Myra "Mic " Nelson started coaching in 1988 as a summer
league coach with the Corpus Christi Parks and Rec. league. In 1992
she became a USA swim coach with the Corpus Christi
Aquatic Team which is now BEAT swimming. Mic works
full time as a registered nuclear medicine technologist at The
Heart Clinic of Corpus Christi. She also works as a high
school swim official. Pat works full time and is certified as
a swim official for high school, USA swimming and college. He
serves as the official starter for the WAC championship swim
meet.
She and her husband, Pat, have three children. Timothy is a
graduate of Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio. He is
presently working as a math teacher and is a high school swim
coach. Douglas is a senior at Clemson University
studying microbiology. Kimberly is a junior
at Boise State University majoring in
communications.
Mic has passed her ASCA Level III coaching
test.
Corey David Bean
Senior Team (Blue Group)
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Corey Bean coaches
BEAT's senior distance group and assists with the senior sprint and
mid-distance groups. Corey is also a Lieutenant in
the Navy JAG Corps where he practices civil legal assistance and
criminal defense. He graduated cum laude from George Mason
University School of Law in Arlington, VA in 2008 and received his
B.A. from Davidson College in Davidson, NC in 1996. He
graduated from Jordan High School in Durham, NC in
1992.
Corey
began swimming reluctantly as a summer leaguer. He got
serious in high school and served as swim team captain his junior
and senior years. The Jordan High School Jellyfish won the
boys' 4A State Championship his senior year. Corey also
served as captain of his college team during his junior and senior
years, and the Davidson College Wildcats won the Southern
Conference Championships in 1995.
Since graduating from
college, Corey has swam with masters teams in North Carolina,
California, and Virginia. His
prior coaching experience includes summer, masters, and
USA Swimming age group teams. Prior to BEAT, Corey coached
the Corpus Christi Country Club. While in law school, Corey
coached the high school sprint group at Arlington Aquatic Club in
Arlington, VA.
Corey's thoughts on
the benefits of swimming: "Obviously, swimming benefits
athletes physically. Apart from physical benefits, very few
activities teach
individual accountability and demonstrate the
principal of delayed gratification as well as swimming does.
When swimmers step on the block, they step up alone.
(Even in relays, swimmers swim one at a time.)
They race without
direct assistance from coaches and team mates, and
everyone races in the same pool, under the same conditions against
each other and objective time standards. Ultimately, the
swimmers own their successes or failures. They learn to
link their volume and quality of work in practice to results in
meets. They learn that paying the cost of physical discomfort
during a hard workout or a foregone social engagement can pay off
when they swim faster then they thought that they could.
These lessons are directly transferable to to
other arenas of life--academic, professional, and
personal."
"Statistically, very
few swimmers will qualify for senior nationals and fewer still can
swim on the Olympic or World Championship teams. Yet, most
swimmers go on to achieve great success in other fields.
Ultimately coaches are more concerned with producing
outstanding young adults than they are with producing world class
swimmers. Being successful takes hard work and self
discipline no matter what field. Swimmers who internalize the
lessons of accountability and delayed gratification have developed
a personal trait essential for success anywhere."
Keith D Springer
Natatorium Age Groups
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I have been passionate about swimming and the
water for as long as I can remember. I am not an expert at
swimming. I hope to never be an expert; rather I prefer to see
myself only as a man who would like to expand his knowledge of the
water in order that I may understand my place within it. I would
first like to state here that I sincerely wish to always remain a
beginner at coaching swimming. I believe that for a beginner the
possibilities in swimming are unlimited. I believe that for an
expert at swimming the possibilities are few.
I remember my first swimming lesson when I was a
very young child. A friend of my family had offered to teach me to
swim. Because I was young and new to swimming, I approached the
water excited, unafraid and completely ready for anything my
instructor asked of me. I can remember the excitement I felt
each day as I met the challenges the teacher presented to me.
It was a wonderful experience full of
possibilities.
Many years later, during my freshman year of high
school at W. B. Ray, the excitement and vitality that I had
approached swimming with as a child had vanished. During my high
school swimming practice, I came to see only the limits of my
ability. During practice I would think to myself, “I will
never be as fast as that one. My stroke will never look like this
one.” Thus, many years following my wonderful introduction to
swimming the original mind I had as a child was lost and replaced
with the mind of a swimming expert. I was such an expert at
swimming during that point in my life that I decided I didn’t
have the ability to win. Thus, by the time of my graduation from
Ray in 1995, I was no longer a competitive swimmer. I
didn’t understand it then, but I later came to realize that
the only thing limiting my potential at that point was the loss of
my beginners mind or the loss of the original mind with which I
approached the water.
I never left the water behind even as I left
competitive swimming. Following graduation I joined the United
States Coast Guard and was stationed in Honolulu Hawaii. I spent
five years working for the Coast Guard in Hawaii and it was there
that I once again found an original mind in regards to my approach
of water. I became an avid surfer and free diver and spent
virtually all of my free time in the islands of Hawaii on the North
Shores of Oahu and Maui. I was constantly seeking the most
challenging conditions within the water that I could find. I was
also passionate about my job working for the Coast Guard in the
field of search and rescue. Following my service to the United
States, I left Hawaii and returned to Corpus Christi, Texas in
2001, so that I could attend college. I graduated from Texas
A&M Corpus Christi in 2005 with a Bachelor’s of Art in
the field of History. Following my graduation, I began
working for the Corpus Christi Independent School District as a
teacher and swimming coach. This year I was moved from the
classroom at Carroll High School and am now employed as the school
district’s Swimming Instruction Coordinator.
Throughout my life people have assigned me
accolades because of a supposed water prowess that I possess. I
think the honors I’ve received due to my knowledge of the
water are meaningless. I am no water expert and I say this even as
my community has chosen me the All South Texas 5A Swim Coach of the
Year for the past three years, even as I’ve coached a high
school team with three consecutive 5A district championship titles,
even after receiving a Coast Guard Commendation Medal for Valor due
to my actions during an ocean rescue, and even after teaching
thousands of others how to swim throughout a lifetime of immersion
within and around the water.
In coaching, in swimming, in life I seek always
to retain an original mind in all of my pursuits. This is because I
firmly believe that in the mind of a beginner the possibilities are
unlimited. In the mind of an expert the possibilities are few. I
feel that any USA swimmer who approaches swimming with this
attitude will find a lifetime of enjoyment and fulfillment through
their expanding of personal knowledge about the wonderful thing
that is the water.
