Head Coach & Senior Group Coach

Ryan Muraoka

Growing up in Kailua, I learned how to swim under the legendary Aulea swim coach, Al Minn, over about 5 summers during grade and middle school. A long time ago.

In High School, I played Football and ran Track for ʻIolani School.

I coached the McKinley JV Football team for a season as their Offensive Coordinator and Quarterbacks Coach.

I got involved in club swimming when my oldest daughter joined a swim team at age six. Not knowing much about the sport of swimming, I watched and asked many questions from each my daughter's (second daughter started 4 years later) coaches. A few years later, I became a volunteer assistant coach for their swim team and dove head first into increasing my knowledge by learning from veteran coaches at other clubs as well as our previous Head and Assistant Coaches.

I became a member of USA Swimming and the American Swim Coaches Association (ASCA) and have furthered my education and knowledge through attendance at every Coaches clinic held in Hawaii since becoming a coach over 7 years ago, and continue to take USA Swimming on-line clinics and continuing education courses.

In addition, much of my technical stroke education has been focused on learning from the top coaches in the profession. I have spent countless hours watching over and over the latest developments in stroke technique and training instructional DVDs hosted by David Marsh (Mecklenberg & former multi NCAA Champion Auburn University & US Olympic Coach), Richard Quick (Stanford University & US Olympic Coach), Terry Laughlin (Total Immersion Swimming Series), Ian Pope (Australian Olympic Coach) & countless other Age Group and Senior level coaches. To supplement my visual instruction, I also have read and learned from revolutionary coaches such as David Salo (USC & Olympic Coach), Bob Bowman (N. Baltimore Head Coach & Michael Phelps coach), Terry Laughlin's Total Immersion and Dick Hannula and Ernest Magliulo.

Much of my current coaching philosophy has been heavily influenced by Dr. Dave Salo's "Sprint Salo" concepts and methodology of training at high intensity and low yardage, and Dr. Brent Rushell who has coined the term Ultra short Race Pace Training (USRPT) but has been researching and studying this scientifically backed concept for over 40 years (one of his mentors, Forbes Carlille who is considered the godfather of modern day Australian swimming, highly recommends Dr. Rushell's research).

I have been successful in past leadership positions from leading our American Marketing Association - UH Mānoa to being named the #1 Collegiate Chapter in the county as a student, to turning around a winless football team to .500 team in a year, running a school PTA and helping manage a very successful pharmaceutical team in Hawaii.

However, I feel my greatest strength as the Head Coach at Splash Aquatics is my passion and love for teaching, mentoring and working with our swimmers, our great coaching staff, the Splash Aquatics ʻohana and the sport of swimming. I believe my non-traditional path toward coaching swimming is a blessing in that I feel that I am always in a constant "learning" mode and I strive to be open to new and traditional ideas and theories which I oftentimes try to incorporate in our training and planning, as well as bringing outside the box thinking based on my life experiences to our program.

Junior Group Coach

Nyles Toguchi

Age Group Coach

Dean Otaka

Developmental Group Coach

Ryan Nishikawa

Developmental Group Coach

Kai Iwamura