How Fast is Your Water?: MASI Visits Five Star Swim Club

The Five Star Swim Club Head Coach, Mark Daum, has been coaching for 51 years, working with over seven teams in his career. Five Star Swimming is the team he founded, originally called Four Seasons. Coach Mark was once a swimmer himself and has been dedicated to the sport ever since. He drives technique with young swimmers, “get the grains right, and get the strokes right, and the rest we can add later,” he said. Building good habits while swimming is one of his philosophies. His assistant coach, Dale Coble, shares the same sentiment, stating that speed can be built off technique.

Coach Dale has been coaching part time since he graduated Virginia Tech, and he has spent the last 15 years with Five Star Swim Club. The coaching staff for Five Star Swimming is filled with experience and leadership.

The swimmers have fond memories of their team and many still have more to come. Some of the fun things Five Star Swimming does at or outside of practice have become the swimmers’ favorite memories. Two swimmers, Brooke and Hayden, look back at the holiday practices sharing similar favorite memories of their team. Hayden recalls the holiday practices with Assistant Coach Krysta Barnhart from when she was a young swimmer. Brooke says her favorite is the Christmas challenge, where they “have two practices a day and then if you go to every practice you get like a water bottle or something special.” The holidays aren’t the only times Five Star Swimming does special practices or activities. Coach Mark talked about all the training trips the team has taken over the years, along with the more regular team dinners at different swimmers’ houses.

The friendships the swimmers make through their team extend beyond sharing the same cap. When the older swimmers compete for different high schools, they enjoy seeing each other and racing one another at meets. The friendships and time spent with each other are what the Five Star swimmers value the most.

Much like the swimmers, Coach Mark and Coach Dale talked about how the times, medals, and ribbons aren’t what matter the most. Coach Mark says their success reaches far beyond their time at the pool, saying that “this is just the start of their journey that we launch them. It’s great to see who comes back and they’re doctors, they’re successful businesspeople, they’re lawyers, they’re teachers, [and] quite a few have gone onto coach. So, it’s not when they leave us, it’s when you see them 15/20 years later and what they’ve made of their life and realize what swimming has contributed to it.”

How Fast is Your Water? Is a part of the club visit initiative Middle Atlantic Swimming is starting in Summer 2025. We have over 115 clubs in our LSC and want to highlight the amazing members who make our organization a community. Check out our video on YouTube for interviews with the Five Star Swim Club swimmers and coaches!