Marianne alvarez
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Marianne was born in Mexico, and moved to Canada in 1987 with her husband, raising her family (four beautiful daughters) in the Okanagan with a focus on strong values and a healthy lifestyle through sports. She re-located to Vancouver in 2005, coaching with EBSC for 5 years before taking a brief hiatus. Marianne returned to EBSC the fall of 2014 after organizing the first ever Para-Relay to swim the English Channel that summer. Marianne has 30 years of coaching experience including 10 years with EBSC, and also coaches Honu, a para swim team in Vancouver, that she started in 2008.
Dedicated and committed to swimming, Marianne was part of the National Swim Team at the FISU Games and was the first swimmer to represent Mexico in Fin Swimming. A passionate open water swimmer, in 1985 Marianne was the first Mexican and first German woman to swim the English Channel. Having coached Para athletes at an elite level (the London 2012 Paralympics and Toronto 2015 Para Pam American Games), Marianne is eager to share her expertise, experience, and passion for swimming with both competitive and fitness swimmers. Marianne has a true passion for swimming and her coaching philosophy is "Believing is Achieving", a motto which continues to guide her daily life. "Swimming is not just a sport, it's a lifestyle where you will learn important values for life. I am very proud and excited to be part of EBSC." For more about Marianne's incredible work with Honu, or to donate to her ongoing fundraising efforts, please visit: www.honuswim.com. |
Bryan Iliscupidez
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Bryan Iliscpuidez is enjoying his second season as a coach for English Bay. At the age of 10, he began noncompetitive swimming at the Red Deer Catalina Swim club in Alberta. Following that first year, Bryan earned a spot from Regionals to Provincials by the end of the full season. The only issue was with breaststroke being his predominant stroke, having been faster than his freestyle times.
Bryan completed his final year as a club swimmer at age 17, making a provincial team to swim at the North American Challenge Cup in LA, and wrapped up his competitive history at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Trials. He competed a single year with the University of Alberta Golden Bears, which ended up becoming very mentally gruesome, having lost the affinity for his reasons to swim. While taking time off from swimming, he transferred to, and graduated from, Red Deer College with a Business Marketing degree in 2012, but still coaching for the Catalina swim club. This reinvigorated his love for the sport, experiencing the joy from his athletes from a day to day basis. Bryan is looking forward to meeting and learning about every swimmer in EBSC, so please bare with him as he continues to relearn names he's been given several times. |
Emily Adamczyk
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Emily Adamczyk was born and raised in Pasadena, California. She started her competitive swimming career at age 9 and swam for Rose Bowl Aquatics in her hometown. During summer breaks, Emily would coach younger swimmers on her club to help them improve stroke technique and get exciting about racing! Her favourite stroke is breaststroke, which brought her to compete at the national level, including the USA Olympic Trials in 2008 and 2012.
As an undergraduate student, Emily swam on varsity for the University of California, San Diego where she majored in Biology. Throughout university, she competed at the Division II NCAA’s where she took home the national title in the 200 yard breaststroke in 2012. Since then, Emily has taught swimming and coached privately. Emily is currently at PhD student at the University of British Columbia where she studies marine biology. She has been a member of English Bay since 2015 and absolutely loves being part of this team! She is excited to coach this season and can’t wait to meet the Masters 101 participants! |
Cliff Thorbes (substitute) |
Ignacio alvarez (substitute)
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Ignacio Alvarez was born in Mexico City and moved to Canada in 1987 with his wife, Coach Marianne Alvarez. A distinguished international swimmer, his personal achievements include swimming for Mexico in the 1976 Montreal Olympic Games in backstroke, at both the 100m and 200m distances, and the medley relay. He also participated in numerous international swimming championships in both the junior and senior categories in the 1970’s. In his specialty, the 100m and 200m backstroke, he was a junior and senior Mexican National record holder.
Ignacio brings to EBSC over 35 years of coaching experience including being a national coach for Fin Swimming, during which time he coached a European record swimmer as well as an age group coach for Chena North Shore SC in North Vancouver. He also coached his wife, Marianne, to swim the English Channel. “My passion is teaching swimmers to love competitive swimming" |
Carl ruest (substitute) |
Carl has been a regular swimmer with English Bay for many years. You will see him on deck from time to time subbing for the regular coaches. His strives to make sure his workouts are always fun!
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Jennika Efford (substitute)
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Jennika Efford joins us from the Canadian Dolphins Swim Club where she has recently come on as their Assistant Head Coach. Jennika started competitive swimming while growing up in California. She competed at a national level in high school which afforded her the opportunity to swim for the UBC Thunderbirds as a distance swimmer while completing her degree in Anthropology.
While swimming at UBC Jennika started coaching for VPSC. Once she had finished her own swimming career she continued coming to the pool every day in hopes of inspiring the next generation of swimmers. After working for VPSC for 3 years Jennika moved to Vancouver Island to work with Island Swimming after spending 2 summers working with the summer club in Duncan, BC. After 4 years at Island Swimming as Head Development Coach, assistant to the Senior Group and yoga teacher, Jennika moved to Tyee Aquatic Club where she has been Assistant Head Coach for the past two seasons. Jennika’s coaching philosophy is aimed at developing not just great swimmers, but great people. She loves working with athletes and helping them reach their full potential in and out of the pool. In her time away from the pool deck Jennika enjoys yoga, trying new restaurants, and travelling. |
Michael DiPietro (substitute)
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Michael DiPietro was born in Brooklyn, NY and later moved to Raleigh, NC in 1996. He started his competitive swimming career at age 11 with the YMCA of the Triangle Area (YOTA) Swim Team. As a member of their team, up until college, he was routinely participating in the regional and state championships. Michael was mainly a breaststroke specialist, with the occasional fly, IM and freestyle events peppered in. As he got older, he took on coaching positions and taught swim lessons. In high school he served as one of the head coaches for his summer swim club, over the span of two years.
Once Michael moved away for university, he continued giving swim lessons, but took a hiatus from coaching to focus on his collegiate swimming career and his studies. As a member of SCAD's Men Swimming Team, he competed at the national level and helped the team place third in his freshman year. That would be the peak of his swimming career as it was unfortunately cut short soon after due to a series of shoulder issues which lead to surgeries, which resulted in an early retirement. Though his passion for the sport hadn't left, his time competing at a high level was gone. Cut to 2014 when Michael has now graduated from SCAD with a BFA in Visual Effects and moves up to Vancouver, BC to begin his professional career in the TV & Film industry. He still had the itch to swim and compete, so sought out a masters swim club. Discovering English Bay, he joined the club for some trial swims and never looked back. After a couple seasons primarily swimming and competing with EBSC, he has decided to switch over to a less competitive focus and to give back, through coaching. Michael's coaching style is technique focused, with the philosophy being, "smart yardage over garbage yardage". He isn't afraid to create the grinding practices, but values technique that won't fall apart as athletes get tired, over everything else. |