Becoming a swim coach brought out a side of himself Ryan Mallette didn’t know existed.
Mallette spent 13 years as a swimmer and admits “I wasn’t fantastic by any means.”
When Mallette decided to hang up his suit his coach offered him a job working with other swimmers.
“He thought it would get me back into swimming,” said Mallette, 41. “It was sort of the opposite. I realized how much I loved coaching.
“I’m a pretty introverted person and it really brought out another side of me to be able to work with young kids, be animated and energetic. I loved it from the start.”
Mallette liked the idea of helping young swimmers improve and gain confidence.
“It wasn’t like working with my peers,” he said. “It was something I’d never done before.
“I appreciated it. I had a ton of fun, teaching swimming but making it enjoyable and making it a lot of fun for everybody.”
Mallette, the associate coach at the High Performance Centre _ Ontario, is part of Swimming Canada’s coaching staff at this month’s Tokyo Olympics. His first Games was four years ago in Rio and he’s ecstatic to be back.
“This is the pinnacle of our sport,” said Mallette. “I’m a pretty competitive guy so I want to be competing at the highest level and I’m happy to have the opportunity to do that.
“I’m thrilled to get a chance to go there.”
Canada won six medals in the pool in 2016, including Penny Oleksiak’s gold in the 100-metre freestyle. That’s the country’s most swimming medals at an Olympics since winning 10 at the boycotted Los Angeles Games in 1984. Before that the best was eight in Montreal in 1976.
There also were Canadians in 15 different finals.
Mallette thinks the Tokyo team can raise that bar.
“We’re bringing a team (that) almost all of them have chances to do something really successful,” he said. “We’re trying to create a performance that Canada may have not had in a long time. It means a lot to me that we’re moving a sport forward for our country hopefully.”
When working with swimmers just starting in the sport the goal is to keep things fun. That changes when you move into the world of high performance.
“When I worked with young kids the philosophy was make it as enjoyable as possible, be as energetic as possible and they’ll gravitate towards that,” he said. “As long as they’re enjoying it, they’re going to keep doing it.
“When you move towards high performance, there’s more of a culture that you’re trying to create. The floor has to be world class behavior in order to achieve world class performance.”
Mallette spent 15 years coaching in Montreal where he spent time as head coach of the Pointe-Claire Swim Club.
In 2013 Mallette moved to Victoria as Swimming Canada’s NextGen coach. He spent the next several years working with Randy Bennett who was head coach of the High Performance Centre _ Victoria.
Mallette took over as the Victoria centre’s head coach following Bennett’s death in 2015. He coached Hilary Caldwell to the 200-m backstroke bronze in Rio.
In 2019 Mallette moved to the Toronto High Performance Centre where Ben Titley is head coach.
Not everyone can make the change from being the person in charge to suddenly having some else make the final decisions.
“It’s a different role than what I did in Victoria,” Mallette said. “I’ve been an associate coach before, I’ve been an assistant coach before. I know how to fill that role.
“My focus is sometimes on different smaller tasks, different duties than they would have been as head coach. I don’t see it as difficult, I see it as a challenge, and it makes me grow in different areas. I’ve enjoyed it.”
Mallette said he has a good working relationship with Titley.
“We work together, we collaborate,” he said. “When I came here, what was asked of us was to sort of grow the program and coach more events. I think we qualified a swimmer in every discipline.
“I think we’ve been very successful at that.”
Of the Canada’s 26 Olympic swimmers 10 train at the Ontario centre, including Oleksiak, Kylie Mass, Taylor Ruck, Finlay Knox, Josh Liendo, Summer McIntosh and Sydney Pickrem.
Being part of the Games staff gives Mallette the opportunity to watch and learn from other veteran coaches.
“What’s fun about this is you’re always learning, you’re always improving,” he said. “I love these opportunities. I’m travelling with the best minds in Canadian swimming. It’s amazing.”
Any coach who thinks he knows everything should hang up his whistle.
“If you stop learning you should stop coaching,” Mallette said. ““You’ve got to have this growth mindset that the world’s moving forward.
“If I’m moving forward as a coach the athletes are going to move forward. We need to keep getting better because status quo is never good enough.”
For Mallette success is measured in small increments.
“The high performance mentality is more like moving an inch a day,” he said. “If I can go home at the end of the day and feel like we’ve moved an inch forward, whether we did something really good in the pool or I taught something that’s going to pay off in the long run, I go home feeling like I helped move someone a little bit forward.
“That feels like a great day. And if you can string together days like that, you’re going to be a pretty successful coach.”