Ken Fittro
Head Coach
Ken Fittro, the founding
and Head Coach of Seaside Aquatic Club, is a Native Californian;
born in Fairfield to an Air Force family (Travis AFB). It is with a
little irony that the birth of the team coincides with the arrival
of his son James (November 23, 1993). You’ll have to ask him
to tell you the story some day, replete with some humor and
satire.
The father of two children; Molly (a freshman Varsity Swimmer at
Union College of Kentucky) and James, a freshman at Seaside High
School, and husband to Nancy, a City of Seaside employee;
Coach Ken has been a fulltime Special Education
Teacher for the past twenty years in California, and is currently
employed by the Monterey Peninsula Unified School District.
After a lackluster career in Southern California in the more
traditional sports: high school football, wrestling, and track and
field, Coach Ken started his aquatics career as a
J.V. Water Polo Goalie at Cypress High School under the tutelage of
Gary Drent and Steve Shaw (brother to Tim Shaw, Water Polo and
Swimming Olympian). By his senior year in high school, Coach Ken
was starting Varsity Goalie at Fairfield high school under Coach Ro
Davis. Coach Davis is one of the most successful high school water
polo and swimming coaches in Northern California and Nevada in the
last forty years; winning multiple CIF sectional championships at
two different Northern California High Schools (Fairfield High
School and Palo Alto High School), not to mention the numerous
State Swimming and Diving Championships won in Nevada, Tennessee,
and Hawaii. Finishing his collegiate careers in water polo and
swimming, Coach Ken received his B.A. in
Psychology from Point Loma College in San Diego, CA. While in San
Diego, he volunteered to work with a small YMCA swim team,
“to keep himself near the water”, and swam numerous
open water swims and also learned to surf on boards he borrowed
from “the surfing gang” at Point Loma.
Coach Ken started his coaching career with his
mentor, Coach Davis, at Solano Aquatic Club as a 17 year-old high
school senior, responsible for the developmental pre-competitive
swim program. In the last 33 years he has been on deck as a coach
for 25 years (taking time off to complete two Master’s
degrees in Education and begin a family with wife Nancy); taking
positions as a Volunteer Water Polo coach at his High School Alma
Mater (placing 3rd at the 1978 Sac-Joaquin Sectional tournament),
Head Women’s and Men’s Water Polo Coach with Washoe
County School District, Head Coaching Positions at Bishop Manogue
High School, Reno, NV (2nd place women’s state championships
1982), and Assistant Coaching Positions at Solano Aquatic Club,
Reno Aquatic Club, and Seaside High School. Coach
Ken is proud to be the current Head Swimming Coach at
Seaside High School and Seaside Aquatic Club. “My greatest
reward as a coach, to this day, is watching our student-athletes
thrive in the pool and at school; it is awesome to witness the
rewards and the skills borrowed from swimming and ‘paid
forward’ to the degree that they have an effect on the future
of our community and the lives of others.”
Coach Ken developed a keen eye for stroke
correction through self-evaluation and correction, asking all of
the right questions, and an innate connection he feels with the
water. He has continued his coaching education through a
career-long affiliation with the American Swim Coaches Association
and relationships he has developed with other coaches.
Coach Ken credits his patience, use of long-term
goal setting, and diligence to detail to his classroom experiences.
“I have learned more about life from my students than they
will ever learn from me.”
