Coaches Biographies

Cara Clifford  (Head Coach)

Cara began her coaching career in 1993 and has been the proud owner of damp deck shoes and drying-out white board markers ever since. She has been coaching with OMSC for so long, she can’t remember what year it all began… we think it’s in the neighborhood of 13 years now!  Cara’s approach to swimming emphasizes creating a fun, positive, and supportive training environment. Her goals as a coach include helping new-to-swimming members build confidence, keeping fitness swimmers challenged and engaged, assisting triathletes with building their strength and speed, and encouraging all swimmers to challenge themselves. Coach Cara believes that even adults need to play, so she strives to include a wide variety of workouts and theme days throughout the season. Ask about the Thanksgiving workout, Easter Egg surprise, and Star Wars days!

Cara is also Head Coach / Director of Swimming of the Highwood Current Swim Club.

When not doing swimming things, Cara can be found creating chaos in the kitchen – particularly in December, ahead of Coach Cara’s OMSC Christmas treat day (aka: bribing swimmers to do a hard workout on the last day before the holidays) or FaceTiming / texting / cyber stalking her 2 children who have now retired from competitive swimming and are both studying at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC.

Tim Arnholz (Coach)

Tim has been involved in aquatics and swimming for over 40 years spending much of that time running pools.  He has swam for teams in Red Deer, Edmonton, Lacombe, Whitehorse and continues to swim with the OMSC and was a founding member of the Red Deer Masters club.  As a Masters, he was a silver and bronze medalist at the 2005 World Masters games.  When not at the pool Tim can be frequently found bouldering at the Calgary Climbing Centre or out riding his classic road bike.

Tim is returning to coach after a long hiatus. His previous coaching experience includes the 2 years as the Head Coach for the Lacombe Dolphins, and 3 years as the Head coach of the Whitehorse Glacier Bears.
Tim views swimming as a life skill and focuses the technical aspects to improve technique while encouraging all to become better, faster and more efficient swimmers.