There's a New Coach in Swimville Posted on 8-4-06
by Erin Quinn

 by Erin Quinn 

"People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit.  Most men succeed because they are determined to."  -- George Allen 

Traditionally there are coaches who tend to favor the winners. There are also coaches who champion the underdogs, the sleepers, the ones they’ve earmarked as having untapped ability. Then there are coaches whose eyes fixate on what potential lies within each of their athletes, regardless of their ranking, and find the mechanism to unleash that potential and take it to its greatest heights. 

This is the type of coach that Hash Al-Mashat aims to be. He is young by coaching standards, 30 years of age, and tall by any standards, except that of the NBA, reaching a height of 6’5”. Unlike the brashness of a Bobby Knight or a seasoned, sweet-smiling, tobacco spitting Yogi Bera, or a jump-in-my arms and give me a kiss-like Bela Karoli, Al-Mashat is reserved, almost painfully so, yet his determination to bring his young swimmers to heights unimagined, lurks behind that calm veneer.  

Al-Mashat, originally from the small town of Berwick, Pennsylvania, found his way to New Paltz New York two years ago and is now the year-round coach of the Hawks, part of the Adirondack Swim League, which is one of 54 nation-wide USA swim leagues.

He was also cajoled into becoming the head coach for the Rosendale Rapids, a small, but passionate summer team that races in the DUSO [Dutchess and Ulster County Swimming Organization] League. 

Al-Mashat is not a retired Mark Spitz looking to redeem faded glory, or even a champion national swimmer with some tips to pass on to the younguns. He is simply a man who loves swimming, who is passionate about the sport and believes that his modern approach to the sport, garnered from his mentor Terry Laughlin, owner of Total Immersion and a world-wide recognized swim-coach, is a wave that his swimmers can ride on and succeed with. 

“I’ve been swimming since I was six or seven,” says Al-Mashat, at a local pizzeria, with his long legs barely fitting comfortably under the table. “Like a lot of kids around here, I was on a local team during the summer. I enjoyed that a great deal, but for whatever reason, I stopped doing it when I turned 10.” 

Al-Mashat’s parents required that their children participate in sports, any sport, as long as they were sweating. “They wanted us active and healthy,” says Al-Mashat, an outlook that he certainly agrees with today, whether or not he did then. 

Having abandoned his summer swim team and entered into the world of high school sports like baseball, basketball, football, Al-Mashat admitted that he “never had much success in any of them. I was just awkward.”

“Whether it was my height or the sport, I don’t know. But I was no great addition to the team. Then I joined the high school swim team. I hadn’t realized how natural the sport came to me and immediately, when I was back in the water, I remembered how much I genuinely loved it.”

The Hawks coach says that he was almost giddy with his new-found love, or more accurately, a rekindling of his former childhood sports flame. “I couldn’t get enough. I wanted to swim all the time. And I was having great success. Every day I got better and faster.”

With that positive swim experience in high school, Al-Mashat was excited about continuing the sport at the college level. But once immersed in his college team, he didn’t have the relationship with his swim coach that he had hoped for. “We just didn’t mesh. I got through it, but I never felt that I reached my potential, or anywhere close to it and that was frustrating.”

Soon after graduation, the Pennsylvania boy headed off for the bright lights and big city where he became part of the film world. “I worked for years in the lighting department and as a technician for dozens of films,” he says. “Several independent films and many block buster films. It was unrelated to what I studied in college but I really liked working in that field.”

While immersed in the film tech world of the concrete jungle, Al-Mashat began to miss the water. He found a local masters group at a swim club in Manhattan and began to train with them. “Within weeks I was back into it, training every day,” he recalls. “Soon, he began to volunteer as a coach. When he wasn’t adjusting lighting or on location, Hash was busy training for swim races, triathalons, anything that would continue to challenge him in and out of the water.

Always wanting to improve his swimming he began researching books on swimming technique. “That’s when I stumbled upon Total Immersion,” he said. Total Immersion is the School of Swim Technique and Training philosophy created and authored by Terry Laughlin, who has been brought in to tweak the techniques of world class and Olympic swimmers all over the world. Based in New Paltz NY, Laughlin recently opened up a Swim Studio where CEO’s and top notch athletes as well as those with water-phobias and little babies come to learn to swim, enjoy the water, shave seconds of their time, conquer their fear, and learn to swim with less resistance and more pleasure.

“I had heard about it at some point but brushed it off, thinking I was too good for it,” admits Al-Mashat. “But when I actually sat down and began reading what Terry had written, it spoke to me. I had read so many swim texts that made absolutely no sense, and this one was just the opposite, it brought great logic, inspiration and basic common sense as to how to approach swimming at every level.”

Al-Mashat, inspired by the Total Immersion texts, put triatholons on the back-burner and began practicing the drills Laughlin described, all designed to lengthen the stroke, lessen resistance and help the swimmer achieve “flow,” almost a Zen-like state where they’re focused on moving through the water, rather than fighting against it and merely trying to rack up as many laps as they can.

“I began keeping a swim log and noticed that my swimming, technique and times were improving drastically,” he said. “I was also getting more joy out of swimming, out of my daily life. It translated to every aspect of my life.”

This also energized Al-Mashat’s desire to coach. He signed up for a coaching conference in Florida and it just so happened that Laughlin was there teaching a course on the fundamentals of the four strokes.

Al-Mashat took the opportunity after class to let Laughlin know how much he enjoyed his books and how Total Immersion was making a profound impact on his swimming. They began emailing back and fourth. “I always had more questions and Terry was generous enough to respond to them. I let him know that I was interested in becoming a certified TI coach.”

The dream of coaching became such a strong desire in Al-Mashat that he left the film world, picked up a temp job and began making plans to find a coaching job by the beginning of the summer in 2004.

He and Laughiln’s world collided again, when Laughlin let him know that he’d recently taken over the head coach position of the Hawks, a member of the Adirondack League—one of several official USA swim leagues— based in New Paltz, nestled into the Shawangunk Mountains.

“The timing was perfect. I was just about to leave my job, had no real concrete plans except a desire to coach and then Terry asked me if I’d be interested in being his assistant coach for the Hawks.”

Although he had enjoyed his stint in the City, Al-Mashat felt comfortable in New Paltz as it reminded him of his small home-town in Pennsylvania.

“I like living here,” he says. “There are all kinds of outdoor activities. I’m now getting into climbing!”

In the summer of 04, Al-Mashat, lived, breathed and swam Total Immersion. “I assisted Terry with the coaching of the Hawks, but I also had tons of questions. And he never tired of answering them.”

What makes TI different than traditional swim coaching? “It’s about technique. There are drills we do that lengthen strokes, create less resistance in the water, keep the swimmer focused on his or her body in the water, rather than just counting laps,” says Al-Mashat. “Conventional swim-coaching has always been about yardage, and speed. The idea being that the more yardage you do, the greater condition you’ll get in and the faster you’ll be for the race. It’s a pull with your arms, push with your feet type of mentality.”

According to Al-Mashat, the TI approach works on sculpting a swimmers stroke. Hopefully they come in when they’re young and moldable. If not, the drills are designed to help older swimmers unlearn bad habits. The idea with TI is that it’s the quality of the stroke, not the quantity of the laps that make a great swimmer. “It’s harder to coach this way believe me,” says Al-Mashat. “It’s much easier to just log in the laps and go off the clock. This type of training takes time and patience. It takes body awareness. One drill builds on the other and eventually you have a beautiful stroke. Yardage comes, conditioning comes, but there’s no point in swimming 50 laps when you’re stroke is terrible! In a 50 meter race you don’t have moment to waste. You’re form has to be perfect.”

Like any new approach this has led to controversy among some of the seasoned Hawk swim families. Several of them have jumped ship claiming that their children need more yardage for the long distance swims and less TI drills.

“There is always skepticism when people are introduced to a different style,” admitted Al-Mashat. “Have we lost people? Yes. But we’ve also gained people and have seen remarkable improvements in the ones that stayed.”

In September of 2004, Al-Mashat officially took over as head-coach of the Hawks. Laughlin is still there to guide or assist him and to jump in for certain training sessions, but Al-Mashat is now the main man. “Terry didn’t want to do it full-time anymore,” says Al-Mashat. “He’s been coaching for years. So we would trade off days and eventually we transitioned until I became head coach.” 

Where does Al-Mashat want to take his team? 

“To the highest level possible. I think that many of these kids have never even perceived themselves as being capable of competing on the national level. But they are. I want their confidence and their goals to grow. We had some swimmers make it to Zones [North East Regional Zone for USA swimming] and this year I’m hoping we get more swimmers to qualify for Zones. Some swimmers have a natural ability and that is an advantage. But other swimmers, if they work on technique and are dedicated and pay attention, can achieve enormous success as well.” 

One advantage Al-Mashat doesn’t have that many of the larger teams have is access to a 50 meter pool year-round. “With all the interest in swimming in this region it’s a shame that we don’t not have access to a swimming complex,” he said, referring to the summer leagues, the competitive leagues, the Masters’ swimmers, college and high school teams. 

“We’re all struggling to get enough time in the college [SUNY New Paltz] pool, and there isn’t adequate time for everyone.” 

For Al-Mashat, access to a 50 meter pool year-round is essential. “Most of the champions come out of Florida or California, places where they have unfettered access to 50 meter outdoor pools. But like Michael Phelps, they can also come from Maryland. You never know where the next champion is going to come from but an essential ingredient is access to proper training facilities. That we do not have yet. So many of our drills build upon one another and I don’t get to see our swimmers every day. I wish I did.” 

That said, Al-Mashat says he recognizes the pressure children and their famlies are under—being pulled in various directions, on various sports teams, dance, acting, music and of course their school work. “I encourage kids to be involved in various sports. It’s wonderful to see what opportunities are out there and what you gravitate towards.” 

But Al-Mashat notes that around the age of twelve or so, it becomes more imperative to choose a sport that you want to commit to succeeding in. That’s when things become more competitive, more practice time is necessary, and it becomes harder to be involved in multiple sports and activities.” 

Ultimately, the goal for Al-Mashat is to have his swimmers achieve the perfect “flow.” 

”When you look at Olympic swimmers, or champions in any sport, their technique is so flawless, their minds so focused that people often gasp and say, ‘Wow, they make that look so easy!’ As a coach, that is what you want.”

 Although he didn't admit this in the interview, Al-Mashat is a national champion. He won the US Masters 10K championship for the 25-29 age group in 2004. Hawks assistant coach, Dave Barra won the national championship for the 35-39 age group in the same race, and with Laughlin having  won two USMS Long Distance championships this year, the Hawks may have the distinction of being the only USA Swimming team in the country with three USMS national champions on their coaching staff.

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