Coach Bios

Steve Van Der Beken - Head Coach and Group 3 Coach

With Steve, competitive swimming has been a part of his life much like waking up each morning. He has quite a history in swimming both as a competitive swimmer and a coach. He was a swimmer on the first swim team in Manchester (the Manchester Swim Team); on the first High School swim program in Manchester, swimming for Memorial High; and on the first varsity swimming team at UNH. Steve has swum competitively since the age of 11 and still swims and trains. At UNH he swam for four years and was captain his senior year. Throughout high school and college he frequently qualified for the finals in championship meets and was UNH's leading scorer for three years. At the New England Championships in 1971 Steve swam the anchor leg of the record-setting 400 Medley Rely to a 6th place finish out of 45 colleges. This record stood for some 12 years at UNH. Steve's coaching spans four decades starting in 1971 as assistant coach at UNH for two seasons. In 1974 he was asked to coach one of the city high school teams and has been coaching ever since. For the first 15 years he coached all three high school teams and presently is the coach at Central High. He assisted many cities and towns in starting high school swim teams. He started the State High School Championship Meet in 1985 and served as the meet director and coordinator for 18 years until the NHIAA took swimming under its umbrella. In 1987 he initiated a swim team at the downtown YMCA. He has coached all levels of the team and served as the senior level coach since the team started. Each year since 1996 Steve has taken 6-9 swimmers representing the Y Tigersharks to compete at the Y Long Course Summer Nationals. In 1994 Steve was inducted into the Queen City Hall of Fame for his swimming and his coaching contributions to the sport. The YMCA named him Volunteer of the Year in 1998 for his contributions to the organization. This involved not only his aquatic work but also his major role in the Capitol Campaign and for serving as the Building Chairman of the Allard Center that included the construction of the Allard center pool, the development of the Allard center day camp, and the building of two large post-and-beam lodges at Camp Mi Te Na. He has also served on various boards in Manchester. Since 1986 Steve has served as the state high school rep for the National Federation of High School Coaches for swimming. Steve's goal for each season is to... "Strive for improvement through stroke technique development, training, discipline and competition. Improvement transcends all ability levels and ages and is the key to a long, sucessful and rewarding swimming career that will last a lifetime." 

Andy Bonte - Group 2 Coach

In 1995 Andy was recruited to coach the Memorial High School Swim Team. Since then he has methodically developed his swimmers each and every year until last season the team won more meets than they lost and were a force to consider at the City and State Championship meets. Andy brings a sound knowledge of swimming to MST through his years of coaching, his continued masters competition, and his competitive swimming as a youth. He also has proven his ability to work with younger age group swimmers in his years as a coach for the Y Tigersharks. Andy was also instrumental in helping the Y team through the interim period before Christa Gillis became the head coach. Andy swam as a youth for the Woonsocket,R.I. YMCA. He spent summers at the coast where he spent hours swimming in the ocean and always dreamed of swimming across the Jamestown Bay to Newport. He accomplished this later during his masters swimming. In high school he played basketball and baseball. He attended Villanova University and after graduating he took up running and participated in local road races and marathons. Then it was on to triathlons; this got him back in the pool, bringing him full circle to his love for swimming. Andy is the Group 2 coach which is the advanced level, working on basic training and a lot of instruction of the four strokes along with starts and turns. These swimmers train vigorously and learn the details of competing as well as the basics of the sport. Many of these practices go 1.5-2 hours. Anyone that has watched Andy at practice and especially at meets can easily tell the he loves watching the swimmers improve. Besides this main goal Andy hopes to foster a love for swimming that will last a lifetime. 

Jeannie Mitchell - Group 1 Coach

If you ever get up at 5 am and are driving downtown please don't run over the crazy people you see running. Jeannie and a few other people we know with MST do this sort of thing on a regular basis. Jean volunteered her time to help coach the younger swimmers 5 years ago at the Y with John Dickerson. Jean also was quite instrumental in helping the Y team when John left and she was also invaluable that spring and summer when the Y did not have a coach and Steve filled in as the interim head coach. She has a proven ability to develop swimmers to improve and better their technique and times. Jean is the coach for the group 1 swimmers. Jean was an all-round athlete both at Memorial High and at UNH. In high school she ran Cross-Country, was a member of the soccer team and played tennis for Memorial. And most importantly she swam all four years in addition to all that other athletic stuff. Three quesses who her high school coach was and the first two don't count (It was Steve). At UNH she also swam all four years. Jean brings a lot of enthusiasm and energy to practice and one can easily see the swimmers relate to her and enjoy the practice time. She develops stroke mechanics and teaches them how to be more efficient by using the basics of swimming. She also spends a lot of time developing starts and turns. The group 1 kids always seem to look happy.