“Developing youth into independent, respectful and responsible young adults of integrity”

The Sierra Marlins is a USA Swimming Gold Medal Team that emphasizes competitive success at National Championships. SMST provides programs (fall program, spring clinic, masters, swim school, etc.) for all ages, skill and commitment levels. The Sierra Marlins emphasizes a strong team concept and teaching life concepts is a vital component of our organization at all levels.
 
Our central theme is, "Developing youth into independent, respectful and responsible young adults of integrity.”, and we live that theme everyday. Our coaching staff is committed to teaching life skills through swimming and we believe there is much more value to our sport than just learning the physical skills. Swimming provides an arena for children to learn to deal with success and failure as well as the value of hard work and goal setting. In other words, each meet, event, practice, set and repeat serves as a challenge to better oneself. Participation provides an avenue for parents and coaches to praise and encourage a swimmers effort and achievements and over time, a child’s self esteem can be positively affected.

Our Coaches view themselves as educators first and strive to teach swimmers about various life issues through a curriculum of concepts that are introduced every week. Personal responsibility, integrity, hard work and our other concepts are taught intensively over the course of a week, each swim season. As the seasons pass, swimmers are certain to learn skills and strategies that they can use to enhance their lives far after their participation in competitive swimming is over.