STANDISH, Maine – Saint Joseph's College Athletics Director Brian Curtin has announced that Jared Felker, a native of Yarmouth, Maine, has been hired as the Men's and Women's Head Swim Coach and Assistant Aquatics Director.
Felker, a former NCAA DI swimmer at University of Virginia, has an impressive background as a club swim coach, having served as an Executive Director while coaching for the Seacoast Swimming Association in Dover, New Hampshire for the last six years and working as a head coach for Seals Swimming, Inc. in Westbrook from 2003 to 2010.
"Coach Felker will be an excellent addition to our campus community," adds Curtin. "He brings strong coaching experience, he is knowledgeable about the landscape of swimming throughout New England, and he is passionate about building the swim program here at Saint Joseph's."
For the Seacoast Swimming Association, Felker was in charge of recruitment, retention, travel, and supervision of assistant coaches while developing a team wide guideline for training and strategies for racing with a focus on senior swimmer development.
In seven years at Seals Swimming, Inc., he worked with the coaching staff to create specific training and racing plans for over 100 athletes, of all ages, and developed and implemented recruitment and retention strategies. His efforts helped the organization triple in size over a four-year span.
In 13 years in club swimming, Felker coached five Olympic Trials Qualifiers, 10 National Qualifiers, a Collegiate All-American, six High School All-Americans, a Paralympic Gold medalist and a World Record Holder. While at Seacoast, he helped the program earn a USA Swimming Bronze Medal Team Award four times (2012, 2013, 2014, 2015) and coached an Eastern Zone Sectional Championship team in 2014.
Under his guidance, Seacoast was selected as a Top 100 USA Swimming program in 2015.
Felker also served as a volunteer assistant coach at University of New Hampshire for two years and, while there, created and implemented training and race strategies, with a focus on power and technique, for the Sprint Group.
"I would like to thank Brian Curtin and the Saint Joseph's Athletics Department for this tremendous opportunity," adds Coach Felker. "The Monks are consistently one of the top swimming programs in the GNAC and I look forward to building the program to its true potential. I am excited to get back on the pool deck and get the season started. Go Monks!"
As a collegiate swimmer, Felker earned a pair of Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) All-Academic honors and, as a senior captain, was an All-ACC selection in 2000.
Felker graduated from University of Virginia with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology in the spring of 2000.
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Saint Joseph's College is Maine's only Catholic liberal arts college, providing a supportive, personalized and career-focused education for more than 100 years. From its 474-acre campus on the shores of Sebago Lake, the College offers more than 40 undergraduate programs to a population of approximately 1,000 students. Saint Joseph's College Online provides certificates, undergraduate and advanced degrees for working adults through an online learning program. For more, visit www.sjcme.edu.
