RAPIDS SWIMMING - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- AJ Fontenerosa - Assistant Coach
Coach AJ joins Rapids in his first year coaching and his 15th year as a Rapids swimmer. He coaches the White Group.
Coach Hannah has been a Rapid since she was very young, joining with her two sisters. She has been an assistant coach in the Summers for five years and is very excited to coach for the year-round team as the Silver Group coach.
Job Titles:
- Assistant
- Coach
- Rapids Assistant Coach
Coach Lisa has been a Rapids assistant coach since Fall 2022. She currently coaches the White and Blue Groups. As a master's swimmer herself and with her three sons currently on the team, she is excited to coach our young swimmers.
Coach Tracey started her swimming journey early, starting at the age of 18 months and swam throughout her younger years in the Atlantic Ocean at the beaches of New England. She became a competitive swimmer at the age of 12, and continues to swim competitively to this day. Coach Tracey has a long history with the YMCA that has lasted throughout her entire life. Most recently, she has been a parent to two YMCA swimmers-turned-coaches, both swimming for the Rapids (Coach Davis and Abbie ). In addition to being a YMCA coach, she is also a YMCA-certified swim official - officiating at all levels of meets including the Lone Star YMCA State Championships. As a competitive swimmer, Coach Tracey was a member of a 3-person team which won a Sprint Tri in 2017. Her team was the oldest team competing, and beat the trainers at the gym that sponsored the event. Coach Tracey had the fastest swim time of the entire event, and she brings that drive and determination to the RLH Rapids.
Coach Tracey loves that swimming is a life-long sport, and it is the only sport that could one day save your life! Her goal is to build life-long swimmers who make a positive contribution to the team both in and out of the water. She guides her athletes to be good teammates as well as to improve both their technique and their performance against the clock. Coach Tracey wants her swimmers to grow in and out of the water. She wants them to get better technically and guides them on how to apply the lessons learned in the water to everyday life. She is the owner of Floating Kiwis Swim School and coach for the RLH Rapids Bronze group.
Coach Xandra was born and raised in Richardson, Texas, but attended high school and college in the northeast, eventually representing Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York in Division III swimming. She has a bachelor's degree in biochemistry and a minor focus in French horn performance. Coach Xandra also attended the University of Texas at Dallas where she earned a master's degree in healthcare management and an MBA with a focus certificate in healthcare information technology.
Coach Xandra's parents were avid sailors for many years, and strongly encouraged her in swimming - primarily for water safety. She enrolled in swim lessons at the age of four at the Richardson YMCA. Advancing through the lessons quickly, she was noticed by the head coach of the Richardson Rapids, Coach Lindsay, and the rest is history. Xandra was a scholar athlete, with both state and national recognition, through all four years of high school and was an NCAA scholar athlete in college.
Coach Xandra taught chemistry and coached the varsity and junior varsity swim teams at Plano Senior High School for seven years (2015-2022). As a high school UIL coach, she had over ten athletes - both boys and girls - compete at the State UIL Championships and many more earn TISCA and NISCA recognition for athletic and academic achievements.
She has a true passion for swimming and believes wholeheartedly that competitive swimming produces some of the smartest, brightest, and most well-rounded individuals. The sport pushes athletes to learn life-lessons and skills and apply them outside of the pool. She believes that swimming, with proper coaching, can physically push an athlete farther than they thought possible. As the Rapids team transitions to a year-round program, she hopes that it grabs all ages of kids and all levels of swimmers.
Coach Xandra currently works at Children's Research Institute at UT Southwestern, lives in Dallas, and has two amazing puppies, Ranger and Annie, and one cat, Tex (who thinks he's a dog.)
Coach Xandra coaches all of the Rapids groups, but is the primary coach for the Gold and Senior groups.