FREEPORT – Right from the start, Dan St. Pierre seemed destined to be a coach.

“When I was in high school, I was probably the slowest boy on the team,” St. Pierre said of his days at Massabesic High School in Waterboro. “But I got most valuable swimmer because I liked to teach the other kids that were coming in what strokes to do and how to do them.”

Soon after high school, St. Pierre took a job coaching at the Sanford Y, and he has been guiding swimmers ever since, including the last 10 years at the Casco Bay YMCA in Freeport. Signs at the Freeport Y inform visitors of the “Decade of Dan” that is now being celebrating in honor of the coach, who has made the program an unmitigated success.

When St. Pierre first got to the Casco Bay Y, the Stripers had 63 swimmers. Now, the program has grown to include more than 150 kids age 7-18, primarily from Freeport and Yarmouth, but also Pownal, Durham, Falmouth, Portland, Topsham, Brunswick and Windham. In addition, he has shepherded swimmers to the Olympic Trials and the YMCA Nationals.

St. Pierre has been a part of the Y system since his parents enrolled him in swimming lessons at the Portland pool when he was 9 due to the lack of pools in his hometown Limerick. After high school, during which he swam both for Sanford’s YMCA club team and Massabesic, St. Pierre took the job at the Sanford Y, where he was an assistant coach from 1990-94. He left for the Biddeford location in 1995.

In 2000, he left the system for a job with a financial adviser, but soon after he started volunteering in Sanford as a coach again. And when in 2003 the head coaching position at the Casco Bay location became vacant, he leaped at it.

Nearly a decade later, he’s still there.

“That’s where my passion was,” St. Pierre said, “so I took the plunge and took the job up here.”

Scott Krouse, the executive director of the Casco Bay branch who was involved in hiring St. Pierre, says he still sees the same level of passion, energy and caring he saw in the coach 10 years ago.

“It shows in his work ethic in terms of the amount of time he puts in for preparing for practices, preparing kids for their meets to make sure that he gets them into the right event,” Krouse said. “The swim team is really a strong community within our Y, so I just really can’t say enough positive about Dan. He puts his heart and soul into providing a positive program for those kids.”

St. Pierre partly equates the growth of the program to his coaching style, in which he focuses less on times and wins and more on technique. In many meets with his younger swimmers, he won’t even tell his kids their team scores, which has led to a few surprises when his swimmers have to stick around at the end of meets for their medal ceremonies.

“I’m not a pushy coach. I never tell you have to beat this time, or you have to beat this person or you have to win this race,” he said. “Basically, my philosophy here is, ‘It’s more important for me to build a champion out of the water than in the water.’ Lots of life skills – being friendly, how to plan, think ahead, self-confidence, everything that they’re going to need in life to be successful. If I have an opportunity to teach it, I do.

“It’s kind of a no-pressure environment. Everybody swims here, everybody participates in meets, there are no benchwarmers, so it’s kind of fun.”

While St. Pierre might not have a philosophy of being super-competitive by nature, it doesn’t mean success has eluded the swimmers under his tutelage. Jenny Roberts, who competed at the U.S. Olympic trials in the 200-meter individual medley and the 200-meter butterfly events and in the winter will swim at University of New Hampshire, learned the basics from St. Pierre when she was 7 years old at the Sanford YMCA.

Another of St. Pierre’s proudest accomplishments is what he calls his “Matt Libby story,” which started out when a 14-year old from Freeport showed up at the Casco Bay Y one day in 2004.

“He came to me in September of his freshman year in high school. He said, ‘I want to learn how to swim so I can swim for my high school. Can you do some private lessons with me?’” St. Pierre recalled. “I said sure. He jumped in the water and he swam to the other end of the pool with his head out of the water. I was like, ‘oh, boy, we’ve got a long ways to go.’”

St. Pierre and Libby got to work, and it turned out St. Pierre had more of a natural on his hands than he initially thought. Just 18 months later, the pair were at the YMCA nationals in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. Three years after that, Libby served as a team captain and earned all-state recognition in his senior year at Cheverus High School, in addition to finishing 17th at the YMCA nationals in the 100 backstroke.

After a year at Indian River State College, where he finished second in the 100 and 200 backstroke at the National Junior College Athletic Association Championships, Libby moved on to Division III Gettysburg College. There, he became a captain and three time All-American, all of which St. Pierre takes great pride in.

“In eight years he went from swimming with his head out of the water to being a three-time All-American, and I helped lay the foundation,” he said. “I look at that and go, wow.”

St. Pierre’s team has had at least one swimmer compete at the nationals every year since Libby first made it in 2006, including Abby Belisle Haley, a junior at Yarmouth High, who has made it each of the past three years. Belisle Haley is a prime example of another one of St. Pierre’s philosophies – that at the end of the day, swimming is just a sport, not an existence.

Belisle Haley also plays soccer and lacrosse at Yarmouth, meaning the coach doesn’t even get to see her until the Clippers’ soccer season ends about a month into the Stripers’ training schedule. But, St. Pierre said, he would never think of pressuring her into dropping soccer, and unlike some other coaches, he is big on having his swimmers play other sports to be better rounded.

“I always tell them, ‘My name is Dan and I’m a swimmer,’ not, ‘I’m a swimmer named Dan,’” he said. “You’ve got to be your own individual self and not let swimming consume you and be who you are. You should be a kid, go out have fun, play other sports, do other things.”

St. Pierre is also distinct from many other coaches in that doesn’t allow his 10-and-under swimmers to practice more than three times a week due to potential burnout. The method has worked – St. Pierre’s girls 8-and-under team has won its age group at the state meet two of the past three years, while his 9- and 10-year-old girls took home the crown this past year.

“I look at a kid when they come in as a 7- or 8-year-old and say, ‘OK, I’ve 10 years to work with you, and we’re going to take our time and make sure we’ve got all the technique stuff down perfect as best as you can,’” St. Pierre said. “I look at the kids as a multiple-year project, it’s not just one year, you’re in you’re out. Getting to see the kids the grow through the years is amazing.”

Krouse said that he believes St. Pierre’s ability to work with each swimmer individually, even on a team of 150, is what sets him apart.

“He has a very nurturing way about him where he definitely challenges the kids to meet their personal bests,” Krouse said. “Every child has goals which all might be different, so he works with every child with where they’re at and challenges them, but at the same time he really promotes the importance of being a team player.”

Ringing in his 10th year with the Stripers, St. Pierre has seen plenty of swimmers go off to college, and many of them still come back to Freeport to swim with him in the summer. And this year, St. Pierre’s team will graduate his first class that has been with him for all 10 years, something he called pretty special.

“How many kids can say they’ve had the same instructor for 10 years?” St. Pierre said. “Like I tell people, I don’t work a day in my life. Yeah, there’s days I don’t want to come here like everything else, but I enjoy my job so much it’s a passion of mine. It’s something I’ve just always enjoyed doing.”

Dan St. Pierre stands with swimmer Abby Belisle Haley at the 2012 YMCA Short Course National Championship meet in Greensboro, N.C., last April. Belisle Haley, a junior at Yarmouth High School, is one of many swimmers St. Pierre has brought to the YMCA nationals in his 10 years as head coach of the Casco Bay Stripers swim team.    
Head coach Dan St. Pierre, in the front row, second from left, stands with his 2011-12 Casco Bay Stripers swim team. St. Pierre is celebrating his 10th year with the team.