Keenan Fogelberg reflects on coaching career

Christi Norris

Helping his athletes log their lap time, assistant swim and dive coach Keenan Fogelberg gives advice. This is Fogelberg’s first year coaching at Prosper. “Before this I was in Dallas and before that I was in Orem, Utah,” Fogelberg said. “Yes I have coached football before officially and I unofficially helped out freshman soccer as well.”

Lily Oxley, Assistant Feature Editor
September 2, 2021

COVID-19 kept his previous athletes home last season. But assistant swim and dive coach Keenan Fogelberg expects this year to be different.

Growing up a swimmer and a water polo player, Fogelberg began his coaching career in 2016, starting in Orem, Utah, before transferring to Dallas. Now, Fogelberg has started his first year coaching swim and dive in Prosper.

“When I decided I wanted to be a teacher, I decided I also wanted to be a coach, so I started getting into coaching swimming,” Fogelberg said. ”Club swimming and high school swimming, as well, and I loved it, so I’m still doing it.”

Since swim and dive is a sport where people compete individually, Fogelberg said it can be “difficult” to navigate, seeing as it’s not as much of a team environment as other teams.

“Swimming is an interesting sport, in that it’s an individual sport and a team sport at the same time,” Fogelberg said. “It’s awesome because we can pick up a lot of kids, as opposed to you know, basketball. There’s only so many spots on the court and on the bench. But, we can have lots of swimmers, and so there are challenges as far as making kids feel part of a group.”

Fogelberg said he faces this challenge by having the athletes practice with new people, and talking to them about team culture both before and after practice.

“I don’t know if I could coach and teach for 40 years like some people do,” Fogelberg said. “But, when I think about something else I would do, I don’t think of anything. I’ve coached other things, and I like other sports, but it’s a huge time commitment, and to spend that amount of time coaching something that you’re not fully in love with is very difficult.”

Although he has only been coaching for five years, Fogelberg has experienced different circumstances from coaching a different sport, to coaching during a pandemic.

“It’s my hope to start coaching water polo,” Fogelberg said. “Right now, it’s a club team that I’m coaching. Next year, it goes full UIL, and I hope to continue coaching that. But, that’s kind of still all in the same aquatic realm. As far as outside of the pool, I don’t really have any intention of leaving the pool deck.”

Fogelberg said he has high hopes for the next season and is excited to work with our talented athletes.

“It’s awesome that we have really nice, brand-new, expensive facilities,” Fogelberg said. “Which I mean isn’t everything, but is really nice and helps. We have administration who supports us and cares about what we’re doing and a new head coach who really knows her stuff. I think we’re going to have a lot of success.”

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