Head Coach Barbara Titus
January 4, 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of when Head Coach Barbara Titus started teaching swimming. She spent the first seven years of her career at the Santa Clara Swim Club (SCSC) in Santa Clara, CA at the George Haines International Training Facility. She was named Master Teacher/Trainer of the year in 2008. And she was the first instructor to pioneer the path from training to coaching. She has been a nationally certified coach/instructor with USA Swimming since 2006. In March of 2011 she left Santa Clara Swim Club to become the Head Coach of the Saint Lawrence Swim Team (SLST). She was the Head Coach of SLST for the next 10 years until March of 2021. During this time, Barbara and her coaching staff trained several swimmers to hold the #1 spot in the entire nation in multiple events and also in the top 16. In April of 2021 Barbara and her husband moved to Oklahoma from California and Barbara worked for Bison Aquatics in her first year here. On August 1, 2022 Barbara started Vortex Swimming. In her first year as Head Coach for Vortex Swimming Barbara trained Kearsty McCoy to become a two time silver medalist at the Special Olympics World Games in Berlin, Germany in the summer of 2023. Barbara's signature phrase is "perfect technique plus speed equals fast swimming."
Assistant Coach Kearsty McCoy
Kearsty McCoy graduated from Duncan, OK in 2017 and has made Duncan her home. She is currently a Special Olympics Swimming Athlete who started participating in Special Olympics in 2012, when she was 13 years old. She lives by her saying, “If I don’t try it will be impossible.” She dreams big and works hard to accomplish anything in her path. She has attended the Special Olympics 2018 USA Games in Seattle, 2022 USA Games in Orlando, and most recently the 2023 World Games in Berlin. While at the 2023 Special Olympics World Games in Berlin, Kearsty received two silver medals. In 2018 she was a co-founder of Specially Made Penguins, a club for individuals with special needs. She continues to mentor the other members of the Penguins to help them gain the confidence to succeed not only in swimming, but in anything they attempt. Kearsty loves her German Shepard, Galaxy, very much. When she isn’t in the pool swimming, she enjoys volunteering as an assistant coach for the Vortex Swim Team, visiting with friends and family and collecting snow globes, especially Disney ones.
