Ray Benecki
Ray Benecki is the founder
and head coach of the FISH. He formed
the club in 1991 for his oldest son Steven, when he was 4 years old. Coach Ray works mostly with the Awesome and Incredible FISH at Spring Hill and the Amazing and Fantastic FISH at Wakefield. However, don't be too surprised to see him in the water with the Mini FISH on a Saturday night.
Coach Ray worked with Kate Ziegler for 9 years in which she set several world records and qualified to be on the 2008 Olympic Team in Beijing. He is an ASCA Level V
Coach and was appointed Assistant Women's Coach for the USA National Team at
the World Championships in March 2007 and he was also an appointed member of the 2008 Olympic Team coaching staff in Beijing.
In addition, he served as an assistant open water coach for the USA National Team at the Pan Pacific Championships in August 2006. He served as Assistant coach for the Eastern Zone Regional Distance Camp in 2005, ran the National Distance Camp at the USOC in 2007, and was appointed by Mark Schubert as Special Consultant to the National Junior Team in Melbourne Australia.
In 2010 Coach Ray won the Dirks/Gould Award. He was nominated for the Golden Goggles Award Coach of the Year in 2005 and 2007. Ray has presented seminars on distance swimming for USA Swimming and the American Swim Coaches Association in 2005 and 2008. He was a collegiate swimmer at Cornell (1970-71) and Delaware (1972-75).
Ray lives with his wife Joanne and his three sons in Fairfax, Virginia.
