Senior finds coaching swimming rewarding

Senior Arnav Pawar, then a 3-month-old baby, gasped for breath in the pool of the apartment complex where his family lived after accidentally falling in. His worried mother quickly leaped in after him, dragging Pawar out of the pool.

Immediately following her son’s near-death experience, Pawar’s mom began bringing him to the pool regularly and putting him on the shallow steps until he taught himself how to swim.

In the years since, Pawar became a water person, taking up both competitive swimming and water polo. He said his passion for being in the water motivated him to instill a “love for swimming in children in the same way that [he] loves swimming.”

For this reason, Pawar has coached swimming at the Brookside Club of Saratoga on Cox Avenue for the past two summers. He was offered the summer job by Nick Burg, Saratoga High’s old water polo coach, who is now the director of the club.

“I love working with kids and being in the water since I’ve been swimming and playing water polo for so long, so I really wanted to get the summer job,” Pawar said.

Pawar worked as a private coach for 20 children, along with teaching group lessons during summer swim camps. This past summer, he worked five to six days a week coaching swimming and being a lifeguard.

Coaching children from ages 2 to 15 while discovering each child’s unique personality created new memories for him every day at work.

Once, Pawar played sharks and minnows with a group of kids, a game in which the kids would try to swim away from Pawar, the shark. A young boy named Nolan clung on to Pawar’s back with a snorkel on his face the entire game, clinging on to Pawar as tightly as he could. Nolan tried to catch everyone else, since he refused to be a minnow.

“Nolan reminded me of a younger version of myself since that’s exactly how I used to be when I was in the water — crazy,” Pawar said.

Though Pawar stopped working in September because of his heavy workload in school and college applications, he still has a side job coaching swimming to four kids around his neighborhood, for an hour on the weekends at their pools.

“I love working with kids, and swimming is my niche so if you put those two things together, there’s nothing else I’d rather be doing,” he said.