bout 14 years ago, Margot May was a mother of three young children, when she started giving swim lessons to her children and the children of her church friends, at her pastor’s pool. She felt a calling to use her many years of experience as a swimmer and coach to teach children water safety and how to swim at a young age.
While Margot was also teaching swim lessons at Greystone Country Club in Denham Springs, she let her two oldest children, 4-year old daughter Berkley and 7-year-old son Laird, both already strong swimmers thanks to their mother’s tutelage, join the children’s swim team at Greystone, and she convinced Laird to swim on one of the relay teams. Turns out both kids took to the competitions literally like a fish to water and were happy being part of the team for the next several years, and they did well. Her youngest, Tucker, a toddler, would join the team, too, when he got a few years older.
In 2011, Greystone Country Club approached Margot and asked her to step in as coach of their swim team to help keep their team together while they regrouped after their coach was forced to leave. Although super-busy with her family and career, she fondly remembers her happy childhood days as a competitive swimmer, so she accepted the challenge. After all, it would probably only be temporary.
Margot is a firm coach who expects her team to always give their best at practices and at meets, but never forgets to let the kids have fun along the way. She often admonishes the kids, “Work hard, play hard, and trust your coach.” With lots of hard work by the team and coaches, her swimmers’ skills advanced and the team won their first trophy, 2nd place, in 2018 at the New Orleans SELA All Star Summer Competition with only a certain number of swimmers representing Denham Springs. They returned to SELA the following year and came home with the 1st place trophy . That same year, they took second place at the Greater Baton Rouge Swim League championship. In 2020, Covid canceled swim meets, but they came back strong to take 2nd at the Greater Baton Rouge Swim League championship in 2021 and to win 1st place there in 2022 – and they have remained the regional champs each year since then.
Margot said, “I didn’t start Greystone’s swim team, I just restructured it and built it from 18 swimmers to an 85-95 person program, and winning the city competition (Baton Rouge) five years in a row, with the girls doing especially well. The ranking for their high school girls among private swim clubs went from 19th to the top 10 statewide.
Two years later, Greystone management, the swimmers’ parents and the swimmers were very happy, to say the least, with their coach and the direction of the team, and Margot was officially named head coach – and still holds that position today. Many of their swimmers stay with the club team for several years or longer and eventually swim for Denham Springs High School or other high schools, and some go on to swim competitively while in college, including some with scholarships.
Margot’s son Laird and daughter Berkley have been by her side assisting with the swim team program from the beginning, and This year, Laird ran the team with Assistant Coach Taylor while Margot took a short trip celebrating Berkley’s high school graduation. Coach Taylor will be stepping down next year to begin her family, and Hayley McKean, one of their swimmers, will be coming on board to help with coaching duties.
Greystone was the first competitive swim team in the parish. PARDS (Parks and Recreation of Denham Springs) added a team shortly after them. PARDS opened their Aqua + Fitness Center with a six-lane indoor pool at North Park in 2011 and became a satellite of Tiger Aquatics (TAQ) in Baton Rouge. The Denham Springs High School swim team and others began using the facility for their practices. Margot’s success at Greystone did not go unnoticed in swimming circles, and 10 years ago, Tiger Aquatics, after having gone through several coaches who didn’t work out, tapped her to be their head coach, and five years ago, Denham Springs High School followed suit. She accepted both positions and still remains the coach at Greystone as well.
Then along came the flood of 2016 to rock the world of most everyone in Denham Springs. Margot and her family survived their home being devastated by the 2016 flood - but her business did not - so a few months later after they had a place to live again, she made plans to change careers and eventually began teaching 8th grade Louisiana History, Quest for Success Entrepreneurship, and Graphic Design at Southside Jr. High in Denham Springs, and started planning how she would pick up where she had temporarily left off with her swim teams.
Margot got an idea for something to help children at Southside who were affected by the flood. “I went to the Southside Jr. High School Principal Wes Partin in 2017 and begged for a chance to start a swim team,” she said. “I also told him, I know what the schools are going through right now trying to rebuild, but I also know what our students are going through. It tears them up to drive by the mountains of ruined furniture and other debris piled in front of destroyed houses across our city everyday on their way to school. I’m not asking for any money -- just permission to do this to give our kids something fun and rewarding to do for a change, and a faculty moderator (who has to be present at all events). Margot got Partin’s blessing and found a moderator in Lindsay Varnado, librarian and a Greystone member. Margot started with a squad of 12 swimmers; today, she has 26 on the swim team.
A woman on a mission in 2017, Margot was still motivated to do more, but realized that Livingston Parish could not be competitive in the Baton Rouge League without a pipeline of new swimmers being trained younger. So with the help of Greystone swim moms that believed in the program, she asked local teachers to be the moderators at other schools, with their principal’s permission. Robyn Smith was the first to say yes at Juban Parc, then Taylor Doucet at Seventh Ward and Sarah Bernard jumped on board at Lewis Vincent. Margot credits these three women for trusting her in building our middle school league.
From 2017-2020 Margot ran the practices of all four teams (Southside Jr. High included) between Greystone’s and PARDS’ pools. Once she took a full time teaching position in 2020 she realized with the opening of the new junior high school and new coaching and her teaching roles, she couldn’t coach every new team that would be formed. So she wrote a guidebook for middle school swim teams, outlining everything a coach needs to know, and presented copies to Juban Parc Middle School, Lewis Vincent and 7th Ward Elementary. The new swim coaches grabbed onto the foundational principles presented in the guide and coach following these programs today.
Margot also gives private swim lessons at times. “Blaize Kiger, a triathlon athlete from Prairieville, was referred to me for specific swim training to help improve the swim segment of his triathlon,” Margot said. “After watching him swim in an evaluation, I recommended him training with my Tiger Aquatics group because we were in our USA Swimming program training, and then I would give him individual direction on the side.” After training with her, Blaize went on to qualify for Team USA, and he will train with Team USA and compete in the World Triathlon Championships with them in Germany in 2027.
Each year, some of Margot’s swimmers compete at the state competition. This year, Beau Barras from Watson, was the state champion in the butterfly in his age group, and JJ Rush who has trained with Margot since she was a very young child won the 100 freestyle.
After the Louisiana’s state swim competitions concluded, 41 athletes from around Louisiana were announced who had qualified to compete in the Southern Zone Age Group Championships July 29-Aug. 1 in Orlando, an annual high-level regional youth swimming competition organized by USA Swimming. It was also announced that Patrick Daigle, of Mandeville, was selected as head coach, and Margot May was selected as an assistant coach, along with two other coaches from around the state, to take their Louisiana delegation to Florida for five days. Margot said, “I was completely surprised because I had not applied, and I didn’t know I was being considered. It’s a great honor, but it meant I only had one week to get my classrooms prepared, and get ready for a bus trip with 41 teenagers, some of whom had never traveled out of state without their parents. Patrick and I had a lot of talks with the kids, trying to impress upon them that they need to get adequate rest, eat healthy, keep up with their gear, and above all, do what their coaches tell them. The Louisiana delegation finished 9th last year, and this year, the kids moved up a full notch into 8th place against very stiff competition from other states, so they did very well.
Looking back, it’s been a long but satisfying road for Margot, never envisioning she would have the success she has had as a swim coach, and she is amazed at how time has flown. Berkley and Laird are both off at college on swimming scholarships at Oklahoma Christian University. Tucker, her toddler when Margot’s saga started, is a 15-year-old sophomore. She and husband Bryan have gutted and sold a devastated house and remodeled and moved into what used to be his parents’ home, and raised three kids while she juggled schedules for as many as four swim teams at the same time, and Bryan worked fulltime.
If you haven’t been keeping count, Margot is currently the head coach for these swim teams: Greystone Country Club (15 years in a position she thought might be temporary), Southside Jr. High (10 years), Tiger Aquatics at PARDS (10 years), and Denham Springs High School (5 years). The wonder is that she held and competently managed so many concurrent responsibilities while working fulltime as a teacher.
Don’t ask how she finds time to relax, read, eat, sleep, or any other mundane things like that. She just fits everything in somehow. As her former business partner, I’ve seen her successfully juggle so many things at one time it was unreal. Now, as back then, I still call her Wonder Woman. And Bryan must be her knight in shining armor, being so supportive of her coaching endeavors, career changes, and taking care of his share of family duties.
Margot said, “None of this would have been possible without the love and support Bryan has given me. He is on the pool deck after work fixing equipment, carpooling our children and so many other swimmers. I turned down coaching multiple times before I made the decision to come back to coaching, and it was his love and support and a talk on the back porch with my late father-in-law, Mr. Ed that always gave me the confidence to be the coach I am today. I truly could not be where I am without Bryan.”
“I keep coaching because I Iove it,” Margo admitted. “I feel called to be a coach, and I feel so blessed to have a part in these kids’ lives year after year. I love watching my kids build character through swimming, by recognizing that they can set a goal and work hard for it and can reach that goal. They learn to be the best versions of themselves by being held accountable for their decisions, learning teamwork and how to get along with people, and how to be unselfish. For many of these kids, we all become family.”
Would you like to be on a swim team?
Interested in the details of being on a children’s swim team?
For info about joining the Greystone swim team or to request a tryout, contact Coach Margot: margottmay@gmail.com. (Swimmers do not have to live in the Greystone development).
For information about swimming with the Tiger Aquatics swim team at PARDS or to request a tryout with them, contact Coach Margot: Margot@swimtaq.net.
Anyone interested in swimming on their school’s swim team, consult your school’s swim coach about when their tryouts are held.
Margot can also be contacted at either of the emails listed above for information about swimming classes or lifeguard classes.
By Helen Wale Turner
