Sports

Bozeman Couple A Team at Home and at the Pool

Posted: Dec 16, 2012 9:12 PM by Mark Freeman
Updated: Dec 16, 2012 9:53 PM

The Bozeman Swim Center was hopping this weekend with an unbelievable amount of swimmers competing in the Teddy Bear Classic, a chance for club swimmers to qualify for the state meet in 2013. An initial reaction to seeing this amount of kids just might be, how in the world do you keep all of them organized? Coaches would be the main reason. A unique staff is on hand for the Bozeman Barracudas who hosted the meet. Jade Sobek, the Head Coach of the club since 2009, and Michelle Sobek, team manager since 2010, lead the team at the top. And it's no coincidence they have the same last name. The married couple has the task of not only raising their own family, but raising a team of a hundred too.

"It's a good thing and a bad thing, that we tend to bring home with us," says Jade. "But at the same time we really try to balance each other out as best we can."

Michelle, who met Jade through a club program in Wisconsin, acknowledges the challenges of raising a family while coach the same time. And is glad that Jade is there to enjoy the ride with her.

"You know it's really fun for the two of us. Because we know that we've got each other's back. We get to help each other out, we save each other in all kinds of different ways of getting everything done."

So the real question is who is in charge when swimming is done for the day and the family goes home?

Jade probably answers in a way that won't get him in trouble: "It depends what it's about. We actually do a pretty good job of splitting who's in charge of what."

Michelle is a little more blunt: "If you ask the parents, I'm in charge. But I will tell you that I couldn't do anything I do without his support. The fact that we both help watch our girls. I also teach at Emily Dickinson Elementary, so we do have some sort of separate lives around here but without eac hother there's no way we could make any of this possible."