Scott Lemley
Head Coach
Scott is in his 31st year as a head swim coach with experience at four different levels: club, high school, college and masters. Prior to being hired as Stingray Swim Team’s head coach, he’s been the head coach of the Fairbanks Arctic Swim Team, Midnight Sun Swim Team, Barstow Sea Serpents, Alaska Pacific Swim Club, Fairbanks Masters Swim Team, Alaska Sports Academy, West Valley High School Swim Team, Lathrop High School Swim Team and the University of Alaska Nanooks (twice).
He’s also been privileged to have been asked to coach several Alaska All-Star Swim Teams (’80, ’81, ’82, ’84), to serve Alaska Swimming as the Records Chair (’89, ’90), the Senior Chair (’02), the Coaches Representative (’83, ’84, ’87, ’90) and the Alaska Swim Guide Editor (’88, ’90, ’91).
Scott’s real passion has been teaching through coaching as evidenced by his involvement in many camps and clinics. He’s been the Director of USA Swimming’s Age Group Development (’84, ’85, ’86) and Senior Development Camps (’87), a Southern California Age Group Camp (’92), the Cecil Colwin Mission Viejo Technique Clinic (’94), Total Immersion’s Seattle Age Group Camp (’98), Dr. Alan Goldberg’s Anchorage Mental Skills Clinic (2000), the 2000 Alaska Coaches Clinic and several Northern Area Training Camps (’01, ’02, ’04).
He was the President of Alaska’s High School Swim Coaches Association in 1988 and was Alaska’s NISCA (National Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association) national representative from 2001 until 2005.
Scott was honored as the Alaska High School Coach-of-the-Year in 1985, Alaska Swimming’s Senior-Coach-of-the-Year in 2002 and received Alaska’s Phillips 66/United States Swimming Outstanding Service Award in 1989.
He’s the author of “Cure Your Kick”, an article which appeared in Fitness Swimmer Magazine in May, 1995. He’s the inventor of a patented teaching aid called the Fistglove® Stroke Trainer and is currently the President of UFG Enterprises, Inc, an Alaskan corporation which manufactures and distributes the Fistglove® world-wide.
Scott holds a 3rd degree Black Belt in the art of Sei Shin Kai Aikido. He founded a dojo in Fairbanks in 1978 where his chief instructor continues to teach students. He credits his experience practicing and teaching Aikido as having played a significant role in developing a coaching style built around the spirit of courtesy, the art of compassion, the ability to commit to high goals and the willingness to embrace challenges. He was inducted into the U.S. Martial Arts Hall of Fame in 2009 as the Aikido Instructor of the Year.
One of his senior swimmers was “American-ranked” and several of his age group swimmers and their relays have been “nationally-ranked”. He’s coached a U.S. Olympic Trials participant, six Senior National qualifiers and ten Junior National qualifiers. His swimmers have been high school and college All-Americans, state champions and have broken hundreds of state and region records.
Scott was part of a group effort to
break a World Record in 1981. His club at the time, Fairbanks
Arctic Swim Team, and the Stingray Swim Team collaborated in an
around-the-clock marathon relay swim in an attempt to break a long
standing World Record. Swimmers, coaches and parents from both
clubs swam continuously at the Old Richardson Highway location of
The Alaska Club for seven days, three hours, completing 56,320
lengths of the pool (800 miles) which broke the existing World
Record by over 100 miles. The event was covered by both TV and
newspaper reporters and raised over $10,000 for the two teams. The
next week the Guiness Book of World
Records published its newest edition without the inclusion of that
particular marathon swimming record because the editors of the book
deemed it unlikely to ever be broken. Members of those teams still
consider themselves to hold the "unofficial" World Marathon Relay
Record
