Sports open doors. Some are obvious, others obscure, but when John Szaranek brought his sons to training at their local pool, years on from representing Scotland in his youth, little did he know that a door unlocking that would lead him to Munster.
“We’ve got two boys who both swam and that sort of brought us back into the sport,” he says, explaining that he called time on his own swimming career in his late teens. “My wife [Wendy] and I both were doing master swimming at that point, and then just one thing led to another, where I ended up helping out at the local swimming club, as a sort of poolside helper.
“Then, before I knew it, I did my teaching certificates and coaching, and all of a sudden, I was involved in coaching.”
The progression from helper to full-blown coach is a slippery slope that has caught many parents unaware, but for Szaranek, it’s led him to a pivotal role in Irish swimming – head coach of Swim Ireland’s National Centre at the University of Limerick.
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With his sons having left for the University of Florida on swim scholarships, the job with Swim Ireland came up at precisely the right time.
“I was really frustrated in Edinburgh,” he says of his previous role as a performance coach at the University of Edinburgh. “We had potential there to do something special, [but] it was as a coach having an ambition which probably wasn’t matched by the organisation at that point.
“So, I decided to look for something else, and at that point Swim Ireland were looking to recruit for the national centre in Limerick, so I applied for that process and ... We’ve been here for eight years now.”
Since his appointment in 2018, Szaranek has been at the coalface of efforts to bring Irish swimming along. Efforts which, particularly of late, have borne fruit.
“In 2025, we won 16 international medals. Now that’s quite unprecedented ... in swimming in Ireland,” he says, crediting the likes of Olympic medallists Daniel Wiffen and Mona McSharry, who have represented Ireland with remarkable success in recent seasons.
Another of Team Ireland’s bright stars is one of Szaranek’s own charges in Limerick, John Shortt, who won gold at the European Aquatics Championships in December.
At a time when many of our top Olympic athletes have taken opportunities to train overseas, most notably in the US, Shortt is an attestation to one of the key aims of Szaranek’s role – that Irish swimmers can compete with the best in the world without having to go abroad.
“John’s a fine example of that,” says Szaranek of the Galway 19-year-old.
“One of the big jobs that I was given here was to develop athletes and get them up to a level where we could start making an impact both at national level and then international level.
“We want to try and give athletes the best opportunity to succeed here. I don’t want them going away to America, I don’t want them going away to university in Loughborough or Stirling or places like that.
“[Now] they understand that they can actually be successful here.”
And so, the Scot now champions Limerick, working to bring as much talent as possible to UL – Róisín Ní Riain, Ellie McCartney and Evan Bailey among them.
And in return, Szaranek says life in the midwest has been good to them. “We live in Ballina, north Tipp. We look right on to the river on Lough Derg and we really enjoy it. It’s a great place, a great town, the people are so good.”
He admits his wife is the tougher of the two when it comes to open-water swimming, which was a sure way to endear her to the locals.
“I’m at the university every day and I’m engaging with people, but it’s much harder for my wife. We moved across and it could potentially have been quite isolating [for her].” But swimming also offered her an in, and, having got involved with development work and the local open water programme, “she knows more people in the town than I do”.
“And it’s the one thing that struck me,” he adds. “How active people were in terms of outdoor life. Even the local GAA club’s down the road and the amount of kids that are coming and going all the time.
“People walking, running, cycling. It’s a very active town, there’s no doubt about it.”
Szaranek acknowledges that while his job gives him a responsibility towards Irish swimming as a whole, he’s “territorially committed” to the centre in Limerick.
“I’ve been committed to this. I wanted to try and make it a success, and we’ve had real good success over the years.
“It’s just been building and building and building ... I’m fortunate that I’ve got some really good staff here who have made a big impact, people that are really committed and really driven to be successful.
“I got asked a question about ‘what is success’. Success is showing that people can come here and stay on the island and be successful. That’s what we’re really looking to do.”
