Reisfield was hired by the Malibu Aquatics Foundation board as the swim program’s coach on June 19
A recent Malibu Seawolves swim team practice featured instruction in various swimming techniques.
Alexander Reisfield, the youth swimming club’s new coach, paced four teenage Seawolves through different drills at the Malibu Community Pool. One drill featured Reisfield diving in the water and filming the athletes from under the surface as they swam from one end of the pool to other — an effort to better break down his swimmers’ skills.
“I can’t definitively say what a swimmer is doing under the water unless I can see them in profile from below,” Reisfield said. “I’m pretty good at guessing, but it doesn’t hurt to show a young athlete what they are doing. Usually they can make the adjustment themselves if they can see it and I can help them look for the keys.”
To be successful in swimming, the coach said, getting technical is important and something the Seawolves need.
“I’m bringing a compete view of technical swimming,” Reisfield said. “The swimmers from top to bottom have a huge deficit in some of the knowledge of technical stroke — some details like starts and turns.”
Reisfield is excited about the opportunity to lead the program, which features swimmers ages 5-18.
“These are deeply competitive kids,” he said.
Reisfield was hired by the Malibu Aquatics Foundation board as the swim program’s coach on June 19. He has coached practices and attended swim meets all over Southern California since then.
Last week, he accompanied Seawolves swimmer Filip Kurial, the Malibu High record holder in the 50 freestyle and 100 freestyle, to the 2023 Speedo Junior National Championships in Irvine. Kurial competed in the 50 freestyle preliminaries.
“He is a unique athletic talent,” Reisfield said of Kurial. “The sky is the limit for him.”
Reisfield replaced Erik Ran, whose firing had a contingent of parents outraged.
Those parents called Ran, the Seawolves coach for three years, a well-liked and fantastic coach. They felt blindsided by his firing and wanted more transparency from the MAF board.
In a letter to the editor published in The Malibu Times last month, Erik Hochstein, who swam with Ran at USC, said Ran was an All-American in college and very connected in the elite swimming realm.
The parents that pulled their kids out of the Seawolves started the nonprofit and member-directed Malibu Marlins Swim Club. Ran is the Marlins’ head coach and a member of the team’s board of directors.
Reisfield realizes he has entered a divided swim community.
“There is nothing I’m not willing to try to do to repair that,” he said last week. “There is only so much I can do. I’ve been here for 45 days.”
The exodus of kids from the Seawolves initially left Reisfield with 18 young and high-school age swimmers to coach. He noted that new swimmers have joined the program since he took over. Since enrollment is low, Reisfield has numerous opportunities to collaborate individually with swimmers.
He said as the club’s membership grows, he and his assistant coaches want to make sure the needs of the entire team are met.
“I want to develop an infrastructure where I can keep giving people a really individualized and informed set of options and discussions with the coaching staff,” Reisfield said. “I want to do things that will promote awareness about the general values we are prioritizing.”
One of those values is teamwork.
At practice in July, Beverly Hills psychotherapist Dr. Markus Rogan, a retired Austrian swimmer who claimed two silver medals at the 2004 Olympics, led the Seawolves in a game of underwater torpedo, a competition in which teams work together to secure a mini torpedo and score a goal while submerged in the pool.
“The idea that you have to go underwater and hold your breath and complete a task as a team is really constructive for a group of swimmers who could forget they are working on something as a group,” recalled Reisfield.
The new head Seawolf grew up swimming in Boulder, Colorado. He started coaching the sport in his late teens and swam and played water polo at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont.
Reisfield has coached with clubs in Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and the South Bay for the past eight years. He also owned a camera services company. Reisfield coached with UCLA, Alpha Aquatics in El Segundo, and Trident Swim Foundation in Los Angeles before taking the Malibu coaching position.
The Seawolves schedule eases up in September, then picks up steam with notable meets in November. Reisfeld said with the summer coming to a close, swimmers have tasks such as school and other sports on their schedules. He aims to help them navigate their responsibilities and maximize their competitive swimming experiences.
“We have swimmers going into the fall and the winter — it’s going to get cold,” Reisfeld noted. “The motivation to keep swimming has to come from the quality of the service we are providing.”
