MOUNTAIN VIEW, California, October 17. TUCKED away on the campus of Google’s world headquarters in Silicon Valley is a four-lane 25-meter pool, built as part of the company’s recreational section of its sprawling campus. The pool is now the site of an official Masters swimming program, the first in what is expected to be a large number of Masters swim teams in the United States with ties to large corporations.
Coached by Laura Schuster, the 18-member Google Masters officially became a team in mid-June, a few months after Schuster first suggested it to USMS Education Director Bill Brenner at the short course nationals in Santa Clara.
“She said she does some coaching and dryland training at Google’s campus, and they just built a pool,” Brenner said. “That’s when bells went off in my head.”
The bells got louder as Brenner began to convince Google to create an official Masters team. The idea of giving employees of arguably the largest Internet-based company in the world structured workouts with a dedicated coach was just the beginning. As members of an official Masters team, each Google Masters athlete now has the ability to drop into any of the 1,500 Masters programs around the country during their work travels.
“It’s not easy to drop into a (Masters workout) when you aren’t a member,” Brenner said. “How refreshing it is to walk into a Masters team knowing a coach is going to welcome you and athletes are going to welcome you. You’re going to get a great workout in during a short period of time, much better than you would get at a hotel pool.”
But the Google Masters aren’t just satisfied with the workouts. Five of them participated in a meet on September 28, where Schuster served as meet announcer and got a thrill mentioning the Google Masters team.
Photo Courtesy: Laura Schuster
“I was able to bring these folks together for a day and do something they hadn’t done in a long time,” she said.
As the company’s fitness instructor, Schuster is more than a warm body supervising a workout. She makes sure to implement swimming-specific dryland routines for her team and make things a bit challenging before they start their day at Google.
Photo Courtesy: Laura Schuster
“Google Masters makes joining a masters team simple because they can get a jump start on the traffic, hit the early morning practice, then be writing emails 15 minutes after they’ve dried off,” Schuster said. She added that almost all of the athletes met each other for the first time when the team started, not uncommon when working for a company that boasts thousands of employees on its main campus.
Photo Courtesy: Laura Schuster
While getting Google Masters on its feet, Brenner was already busy securing agreements with other major companies to start Masters teams. He said computer technology company Oracle is another major business he’s hoping will have a Masters team very soon. A new pool on Apple’s main campus in Cupertino is scheduled for a 2015 opening, and Brenner hopes an Apple Masters team – complete with the famous Apple logo on the swim caps – will be a reality by then.
Without a hint of boastfulness, Brenner said “I want to approach all the Fortune 500 companies in the next three years.”