By Terin Frodyma on SwimSwam
Two former University of Alabama swimmers, Clark Garner and Kaylin Garner, set out to make an impact in the water in southern Mississippi, an area where swimming’s presence is lacking, by founding their own swim club, HubCity Aquatic Club.
The two University of Alabama alums met just two weeks into their first year in Tuscaloosa. Both competing between the lanelines for the Crimson Tide, each boasting decorated careers; Kaylin, formally Kaylin Burchell, notably was a two-time SEC Champion, winning both the 100 and 200 breaststroke events in her senior season, later finishing runner-up in the 100 breast at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships in 2015.
The Mississippi native Clark and the Kentucky-raised Kaylin tied the knot in 2016, a year after they graduated from college, and decided to move to Mississippi, where Kaylin had been accepted into nursing school, and Clark had been accepted into an accounting program at the University of Southern Mississippi.
“We actually really were not planning to be involved in swimming,” Kaylin said in an interview with SwimSwam. “Yeah, not at all,” Clark added.
Their return to the sport came about when a private school coach stepped down, and the Garners stepped in.
“They begged us to coach this little private school, and it just turned into this whole thing. Like we had 10 kids, and then 20 kids,” Kaylin said. “And then the parents asked us to start a club team, and we just became interested in swimming again.”
Kaylin and Clark began their own swimming venture under their LLC, Garner Swimming, which offered swim lessons and advanced training for kids in the area. With that came the creation of HubCity Aquatic Club in late 2022 to early 2023, where Kaylin and Clark are not only coaches, but club founders as well.
“If you had told us what all it entailed before we started it, we probably wouldn’t have done it,” Clark said. “Now it’s like our baby, and we’re so invested.”
Kaylin echoed similar sentiments to her husband, sharing her love for the community that their team has brought together, saying the “families and these kids that we have on the swim team, they love to swim, they love us, and we love them. It’s been a great experience.”
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The team initially operated out of a hospital-owned Wellness center pool, with lanes only three and a half feet deep.
“So we practiced in a puddle for a couple of years,” Clark jokingly said.
HubCity Aquatics now operates out of multiple pools, including the pool on the campus of the University of Southern Mississippi.
“The tough situation is travel.. Getting two hours of consecutive pool time is difficult,” Clark said. “We practice four days a week… Two of those days, we only get an hour, but it’s better than what we were dealing with.”
“One of the biggest challenges was trying to find a pool that was not just going to give us an 8-9 pm slot to practice,” both Clark and Kaylin said. “The politics in swimming is hard; neither of us realized how political some of this is, even on the coaching side, so we’ve had to learn some new stuff,” Kaylin added.
HubCity Aquatic Club currently has 100 swimmers, with about 50 of them competing for the team. There have even been complications with team size, as they have had to put people on waiting lists to join, partly due to limited pool space.
The team is also one of just a dozen teams in the Mississippi Swimming LSC.
Kaylin even added that the popularity of other sports in the state of Mississippi has made it hard for the team to keep boys on the team consistently.
“Especially in South Mississippi, we lose them to football, baseball, and basketball, which I’m sure around the country that’s a thing, but I feel like especially in the South,” Kaylin said.
The size of the team, while impressive, is secondary for the Garners; the impact the sport has on the swimmers takes center stage, especially in the area’s swimming landscape.
“We want kids to love the sport… and there was not much of an opportunity for that to happen here,” Clark said. “Some teams around here require swimmers to be able to swim all the strokes and distances in certain times, but we’ll take anyone who’s not scared of the water.”
Another hurdle that the Garners have found is just getting swimmers comfortable enough to compete.
“The hardest part is teaching a kid how to swim, getting them comfortable in competition. And trying to teach them to race, once they figure that out, it’s easy,” Kaylin said.
HubCity Aquatic Club also features a very youthful roster, with the oldest swimmers being just 14 years old.
“The oldest kids we have are 14, about to turn 15, so we don’t have any senior age swimmers,” Kaylin said. “Which is great because I would say most of our young kids who have started with us have stayed with us. We have developed these swimmers.”
The team also has a close and consistent relationship with the Garners’ alma mater, Alabama, with the Crimson Tide coaching staff even running a swim clinic for HubCity Aquatic Club in May.
“Margo Geer and I grew up racing each other, and she was about a year ahead of me. She and I talk on the phone, and we have the support of the staff, and that staff has our support,” Kaylin added.
Though both Clark and Kaylin have years of experience in swimming, this journey takes them back in a way, back to the ground level of age-group swimming and club teams, but this time with a lot of knowledge and prior experience.
“I think it gives us a good perspective to put ourselves in the kids’ shoes. When it comes to setting realistic goals, when it comes to race disappointment and just kind of being able to see it through their eyes too. And also as parents, I feel like that gives us a good perspective.” Kaylin said about things she learned as a high-level swimmer and now as a coach.
With the roots of HubCity Aquatic Club being in swim lessons (which are still offered to any and all ages), the club and program vows to not shy away from giving anybody the chance to get into the water, especially with the number of drowning deaths in Mississippi.
“Mississippi is very behind in most things in swimming, I didn’t realize how many adults and kids Mississippi would drown if they fell in the pool of like four or five feet of water,” Clark said. “I would say probably one out of every three people I meet do not know how to swim, and there’s just no access to it either… we want to be able to do that.”
“Just taking a kid to the pool and exposing them to that environment could save their life,” Clark later added. “I’ve had like a six- or seven-year-old kid show up to swim lessons and they’re just terrified. We have had to talk for at least 10 minutes to even get them to put a toe in the water… but building that awareness could potentially save their life.”
When asked about how they would define their efforts and the state of the club five years from now, both Kaylin and Clark had the same answer: influencing lives.
“It’s just nice to be an influence on these kids’ lives, especially to be another support system outside of the pool,” Kaylin said. “It’s just nice to be involved in their lives, and anything positive that Clark and I could have done is great.”
“We could be having the worst day of our year and then we go to practice and see all the kids and get to coach them for an hour or two hours, and it’s always nice,” Clark added. “So, just any positive impact that we can have on those kids’ lives. I mean, we have kids all the time tell us they want to be a swim coach one day, and that’s the compliment we want to hear.”
Read the full story on SwimSwam: Clark and Kaylin Garner Turn Swimming to Opportunity in Mississippi with HubCity Aquatic Club
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