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Who Is Coach Sickie?

Courtesy of WOWSA, La Jolla, California.

Coach Sickie aka Ronald A. Marcikic started coaching in 1966 – and has never stopped.

Director/Head Coach, University of California, San Diego Masters Sports
Sickie is the founding Director and Head Coach of the University of California, San Diego Masters Sports program in La Jolla, California. This long standing Southern California program includes 300 plus athletes in 25 weekly swimming, running and triathlon workouts, with a coaching staff of 13 professional coaches.
Sickie has been a water person his whole life. He was a top competitive swimmer through college and started coaching in the Michigan country club league in 1966. Although coaching masters is his first love, Sickie has worked with age group, high school and college swimmers since 1967.
His first masters programs between 1977 & 1982 in San Diego were the MRC Masters, Miramar Naval Air Station Masters, JCC Masters, Mission Valley Masters and the Clairemont Masters swimming programs. These programs were all rolled into one giant swimming group in 1983 when UCSD built their first 50 meter pool. The university had given Sickie 5 years of pool time and the rest is history.
Sickie is a current American Swim Coaches Association (ASCA) Level 5 Masters Coach, and has made numerous ASCA World Clinic presentations in the master’s track. Closing in on 50 years of coaching and 58 years of competitive swimming experience, Sickie’s unique coaching style has evolved and ‘somewhat matured’ into a full mind/body experience for anyone who has found themselves in the pool with him on deck. His motto is ‘Ya Gotta Wanna’, and it fits ‘this guy with the mis-matched socks’ and Aloha shirt to a tee. Fitness is a way of life!
Team Building Discussion: “Friday Night Madness at the pool…”
Team building is usually a collective term for various types of activities used to enhance social relations and define roles within teams often involving collaborative tasks. As it pertains to masters swimming programs, however, the definition becomes both broader in the scope of the activities enhancing social relations, but narrower in defining roles involving collaborative tasks. The end result should be a more cohesive ‘community’ of swimmers all sharing a common space (swimming pool) with similar goals.
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