From the outside, it may look like he couldn’t lose.

Chesterton Boys Swimming coach Kevin Kinel may have had the best horses in the race, but everyone always forgets how they get there.

Kinel earned his second consecutive Indiana High School Swimming Coaches Association Coach of the Year award after guiding the Trojans to their second straight state championship.

“To win it once is an incredible honor and to win it twice is almost a dream,” Kinel said. “I feel fortunate that the kids performed. It wasn’t the goal, but it’s quite an honor.”

Chesterton won the first five races in the pool on their way to the title as they amassed 222 team points.

“The biggest thing about the it is that it’s voted on by your peers,” Kinel said. “I have great kids and a great staff. We have a great feeder program. I’m certainly not doing it by myself. All those people deserve the recognition too.”

Kinel isn’t just a bus driver that delivers the kids to a meet and turns them lose. Those outside of the swimming community don’t always understand the things that go into a program’s success.

“It’s the training. It’s the race strategy,” Kinel said. “It’s keeping the whole team together and pushing the right buttons.”

And junior star Kyle Whitaker understands.

“Everything we do is because of him,” Whitaker said. “He’s there every day. He always pushes us and he’s really put in the time.

“We have wacky days and he keeps us in line with his constant reminders.”

And although the awards are nice, Kinel has much grander goals.

“I don’t think anybody is in this business to win a Coach of the Year Award,” Kinel said. “We want to bring the kids along for four years and get them to a good school. My benefit is sending kids to college and seeing them come back and give back to the program.

“You see them come back and the other kids realize that if they do what you ask, they might be able to do it too.”

Posted 3/13/2009