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My Story
I started to coach while I was still in High School. As an athlete, I simply fell in love with the science behind sport. I dreamt of working in the Olympic realm. Sport went from being a non-existent part of my early childhood to a critical element of who I was in High School. I came into competitive sport at a much later age.
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My love for sport and entrepreneurship led me to University of Colorado, Colorado Springs where I began a Bachelors in Sports Management. I didn't quite know where in the sports world I wanted to be. After taking a sports science class, I realized that my passion truly lied on the coaching end of things. Convinced that I would eventually combine my two passions into one, I added a Bachelors of Health Science, Sports Conditioning degree to my plan.
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During my early years, I found myself coaching strength and conditioning at a local dance school, which got me hooked on the idea of working with youth. I later transitioned to starting Out of the Box Performance, LLC where I would dive into the world of Elite Sport, managing and coaching Out of the Box Performance/International Dyslexia Association and later winning my first two National titles as a coach with one of my Paralympic Cyclists.
In 2014, nearing the end of my undergraduate work, I took an internship at USA Weightlifting in Coaching Education. My role was to revamp all of the coaching education manuals and materials as well as add additional content. My internship turned into a more permanent role as I continued to improve their coaching courses. Eventually creating the American Development Model which at the time had really started to emerge within the National Governing Bodies. The American Development Model was based off of Istvan Balyi's Long Term Athlete Development Model which laid out appropriate ways to train youth for long term success based on the physiological age of an athlete instead of chronological age.
Coming off of my success with my Paralympic cyclists, I was offered the opportunity to take a dive into the realm of adaptive sports, and joined Team Navy as the Head Coach of their Wounded Warrior Swim Program, a role in which I still serve.
That same year, I had taken the role as the head coach of the YMCA of the Pikes Peak Region. Over the next two years, I transformed the swim team program into an emerging team in Colorado Swimming, taking a team record number of kids to state sponsored meets.
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In 2016, I felt as though in order to truly transform my coaching and put theory into practice from my Masters in Youth Development Leadership program, I started Full Armour Swim Team. Owning a team, gave me the freedom to incorporate much of what I wanted to do without hovering thorough red tape. It didn't take long before we had transitioned from being just an ordinary swim team to a family.
Feeling led by God, I continued to grow and build Full Armour Aquatics, adding Water Polo, Diving and Swim Lessons to the growing list of offerings over the next two years. At the beginning of 2019, we set off on a mission to expand our reach into the drier side of things and officially launched what is now Full Armour Sports Teams. In October of 2019, we officially launched Full Armour Basketball, the first of our land based sports programs.
As the Basketball team started to expand we were offered the opportunity to bid on a pool and recreation management contract and in early Feb 2020, Full Armour Aquatics Management was born. Our pool and recreation management program now serves over 500 members across two pools in Colorado Springs, CO.
Everything appeared to be heading in the right direction when COVID-19 put a halt on everything we were doing. We spent majority of March and April on zoom training with the kids. As the weeks rolled on, the kids lost all excitement, depression started to set in and our kids were breaking down crying on team meetings. We decided enough was enough, our kids mental health out-weighed the risk of COVID-19 and we began the search for our first brick and mortar location that we controlled. The search for a location was difficult as the state had placed a hold on real estate showings. But on April 28th, we put what little money we had left into a gym space with nothing but a prayer that we were going to survive the pandemic. We signed the lease on May 1, and for the first time in almost 3 months, we got our team back training in person in what is known as the Full Armour Training Center
Since the launch of Full Armour Training Center, we added Martial Arts in June 2020, Powerlifting in July 2020, Softball in August 2020 and Baseball in Feb 2021. The Training Center has also expanded into an additional space with a turf field and nets for softball and baseball cages. The Powerlifting team has since taken home 81 State Records and 5 American Records and has 7 athletes slated to compete at National Championships. The road has been long since the very beginning in 2016 and many hurdles have had to be overcome, especially in this COVID-era we reside in, however the strength and resilience of our athletes and teams in undeniable and we look forward to continued growth!