We are here to support your needs. If your questions are related to workouts, meets, events, goal setting, and other swimming related needs, please contact one of the coaches. For all questions related to administrative, such as dues, safety, or policy issues, please contact Coach Kate Chronic.
Coaching Staff
Kate Chronic
Owner & Head Coach
Coach Kate Chronic started M3 Aquatics as the new Head Coach and Director of the club. Prior to starting M3 Aquatics in 2020, Coach Chronic was the Head Coach with Midway Aquatics from 2013-2020. Before moving to Chicago, Coach Chronic was coaching with Excel Aquatics in Nashville, Tennessee from August 2007-April 2013 where she was a full-time Assistant Coach training swimmers at both the MTSU Recreation Center site and Brentwood site as well as assisting with the team administration. Before moving to Tennessee, Coach Chronic was the Head Coach for CATS Aquatic Team in Libertyville, Illinois from April 2001 to August 2007. She was also the Head Swim Coach, Men’s Varsity Team at Libertyville High School, Libertyville, Illinois. While at CATS, Kate was responsible for all aspects of the competitive swimming team, daily development and implementation of workouts, stroke development, weight training, dryland exercises for approximately 250 athletes age 5 to post-collegiate and Masters level. She has coached numerous athletes to the Sectional, Junior National, National, and Olympic Trials level in addition to coaching numerous high school All-Americans. Coach Chronic is currently a Level 4 ASCA Coach member.
Coach Kate Chronic has served many roles with USA Swimming, Illinois Swimming, and Central Zone Swimming. She currently is a member on the USA Swimming National Board of Review, the Illinois Swimming Senior Committee, and is a member of the Illinois Swimming Rules and Regulations Committee. She also currently serves USA Swimming as a member of the USA Swimming Sports Medicine Network and the National Team Managers pool. She previously served USA Swimming on the USA Swimming Club Development Committee, USA Swimming Age Group Planning Committee, and USA Swimming Central Zone Board of Directors. She has served on the Illinois Swimming Board of Directors as the Safety Coordinator, Rules & Regulations Chairperson, Age Group Vice-Chairperson, and Website Coordinator. While coaching with Excel Aquatics she served on the Southeastern Swimming Board of Directors as Southeastern Swimming Administrative Vice-Chair, Open Water Swimming Coordinator, and Southeastern Swimming Bylaws Coordinator.
Coach Chronic received her BA in Psychology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee in 1987. She was a member of the Lady Vols swim team from 1982-1984 where she was an All-American. She also has completed Master of Arts courses in Clinical Psychology with an emphasis on assessment, psychological testing, motivation, and cognitive-behavior therapy at Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
Ben Ruslan Pearthree
Assistant Coach: Black & Silver
Director, Communications & Program Development
Ben serves as the Lead Coach for the Black Group and has coached in Minneapolis, Saint Louis, and now with us in Chicago. Before age-group coaching, Ben taught lessons and worked as a technique coach in Minneapolis, MN. He attended Loyola University Maryland and Saint Louis University where he obtained his degree in Advertising/PR and competed as a sprint butterflier and mid-distance freestyler.
Ben has previously served as a club athlete representative to the board of Minnesota Swimming and as an ambassador for his home state of Minnesota the first USA Swimming Zone Diversity Select Camp. Due to Ben's passion for advocacy in swimming he also currently serves on the board of Illinois Swimming as the chair of the Illinois Swimming Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee. Ben's work on DEI and community engagement has also received national recognition and in 2022 Ben was awarded the USA Swimming Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Award.
Ben was born in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, and was a qualifier for Russian Olympic Trials. He also holds 13 Minnesota Club State titles and has been trained under coaches such as the US Olympic Team Coach Ross Gerry, and world record holder Jim Halliburton. While off the deck, Ben works in digital communications. He enjoys traveling, exploring new spots around the city, and spending time with his partner Rachel and cat Kida.
William Maurice Wills
Assistant Coach: Green, Bronze, Masters, Triathlon
Director, Finance & Human Resources
Michael Wong
Volunteer Assistant Coach
Michael has returned to the sport of swimming after a long hiatus. He started swimming competitively as an age-group swimmer for the city team in Berkeley, California. He soon started swimming, year-round, and began playing water polo as a field player, and also as a goalie. Before leaving the West Coast to attend Williams College in Massachusetts, Michael had several years of experience teaching swimming lessons and had finished his first season as one of the head coaches of the city summer league team. At Williams, Michael earned Division III All-American, and Academic All-American honors and played club water polo while earning his BA as a Biology major. He returned each summer to coach the team in the same pool where he grew up swimming. After college Michael’s coaching experience extended to the Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut where joined a well-established high school and age group swimming program (Hopkins Mariners Swim Team) and helped establish the school’s first water polo program. While on the coaching staff at Hopkins (and teaching high school Biology) the school won the Boys’ New England Prep School Swimming and Diving Championship in 1998 (until 2017 Hopkins was the only day school to ever win the title). In the Hopkins’ fifth season of water polo ever the team qualified for the New England Prep School Water Polo Championship and placed 6th after being ranked 8th in the eight-team tournament (and the only co-ed team in the tournament) Michael moved to New York City in the fall of 2001 for graduate school, started teaching again and took a break from competitive swimming. He did the first Brooklyn Bridge Swim across the East River in 2006 (mostly on a dare from his sister, who swam the race with him), but stepped away from the sport until 2016 when his oldest child joined Midway Aquatics. He coached with Midway Aquatics from 2016 to 2020, before moving to M3 Aquatics to continue his coaching career.
Robert Rodriquez
Assistant Coach: Navy, Gold, College, & Masters
Head Coach: Water Polo
Ryan Gibbons
Assistant Coach: Silver
Ryan is a lifetime swimmer-turned-coach who is currently pursuing his PhD in Political Science at UChicago. He began swimming competitively at seven years old for the Blue Dolfins in Oviedo, Florida, where he spent ten years learning the fundamentals of swimming (bubble rings, loud kickboard sounds, and watching planes fly overhead). He later swam for Oviedo High School, and was a member of their state title-winning squad in 2018 and 2019. In college, he swam for Emory University, where he was captain as well as a 2x NCAA team chamion, 2x NCAA All-American, CSC Academic All-American, and the only swimmer in program history to win the team-voted Madeline Jude Brown Spirit Award for three seasons. Ryan graduated in 2024 with highest honors, earning his B.S. in Quantitative Sciences (Sociology) and Political Science, as well as a Civic and Community Engagement Fellow.
Through a combination of incredible support from both professors, coaches, family, and teammates, Ryan decided to immediately pursue his doctoral degree, and chose to attend the University of Chicago beginning in 2024 to study formal theory and comparative politics. Ryan uses incentive models to analyze strategic interactions of political actors with specific substantive focuses in climate politics and populist movements. He is a Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph Fellow through the Center for International Social Science Research, and an incoming Frédéric Bastiat Fellow with George Mason University's Mercatus Center.
After a nearly six-week retirement from swimming in early 2024, he began coaching summer league at the end of senior year of college and joined M3A upon moving to Chicago. He has 3+ years of professional lessons experience, and was nominated for ASA Coach of the Year in his first summer league season. Outside of the pool, he is a committed volunteer within USA Swimming's governance structure, and has served as the Zone Directors' Council Co-Chair and Southern Zone Athlete Director, in addition to positions on the National Safe Sport Committee and National Board of Review Committee. He can almost always be found either in the Political Science department's offices, or at home with his cat Juniper.
Dar Novak
Head Coach: Diving
Jonathan Hutton
Director, M3A Swim School
Jonathan Hutton has been a part of the Aquatics community for over 20 years, starting when he joined the Sacramento Stingrays as a young kid in 2003. His swimming experience includes the Stingrays (2003-2013), John F. Kennedy High School (2010-2013), and Sacramento City College (2015-2017). His favorite races are the 200 IM, 100 Butterfly, and 100 Freestyle.
After high school, he spent the next 9 years with the City of Sacramento Aquatics Department, where he worked in various roles: As a lifeguard, swim instructor, swim coach, pool manager, and office administration.
A coach since 2013, his highlights include:
- 2016-2020: Head Coach - Clunie Marlins
- 2017-2023: Varsity Head - West Campus High School
- 2022-2023: Assistant Head - Sacramento City College
- 2022-2023: Age Group Coach - DART Swimming
A graduate from CSU-Sacramento in Economics, Jonathan also enjoys playing basketball, occasionally video games (his favorite being Halo), traveling around the country, and spending time with family and friends. He also likes swimming in his free time. You'll rarely see him away from the water!
Aquatics has been an integral part of his life, and he is eager to give back to the community that has meant so much to him for all these years. He believes that swimming is the perfect sport for the long term, in which all are given the opportunity to lead a healthy lifestyle, learn new things, form lifelong relationships, and find fulfillment and self-confidence through true accomplishment.
Jonathan is incredibly excited to be starting the next chapter of his life as Swim School Director and to do his part in fulfilling M3A's mission of robust community engagement for the youth on the South Side of Chicago.
