AQUA MAN

Swimming has taken longtime coach/USA Swimming administrator Michael Lawrence to natatoriums in countless countries, but what continues to mean the world to him is located right here—the Lake Forest Swim Club.

ALYSE MAURO MASON KNOWS ALL about Michael Lawrence, the exceptional head coach/executive director at the Lake Forest Swim Club (LFSC), and Michael Lawrence, the revered USA Swimming administrator.

She swam fast for him. She also watched and heard elite folks at an Olympic venue express waves of appreciation for him.

“I was assigned lane one (a low seed’s spot) for the 500-yard freestyle race at a club meet in Wisconsin,” recalls Mauro Mason, a 2003 Lake Forest High School (LFHS) graduate and 10-year member of the LFSC. “Coach Mike told me to take it out fast and hold on for as long as possible.”

“I couldn’t believe the strategy at first,” she continues. “Take it out fast, in the 500? Are you kidding me? That’s something you try to do in the 100 free or the 200 free, not in a distance event. I remember thinking, ‘This is going to hurt.’”

Lawrence’s charge had just turned 15. The event’s top seed, slotted to start from a middle block, was 18. Mauro Mason—uber-versatile swimmer Alyse Mauro back then—held on, endured searing pain, and won in impressive fashion, stunning the favorite by at least three body lengths.

“The hug Coach Mike gave me on deck afterward, you don’t forget a moment like that,” Mauro Mason says. “He was laughing hard; I was laughing hard. I think he went with that unusual race plan because he had noticed I had something left at the end of previous races.”

Years later, Mauro Mason walked alongside Lawrence at the United States Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and surmised the man next to her must have been a Hollywood Walk of Fame honoree.

“Coach Mike was treated like a celebrity everywhere we went, with all these people coming up to him to shake his hand or give him a high five or say something nice to him,” says Mauro Mason, the co-event director of the Chicago chapter of Swim Across America, a nonprofit dedicated to raising money and awareness for cancer research, prevention, and treatment. “He has passion for coaching and passion for everything he does for USA Swimming because he wants to help make athletes and the sport of swimming better.

“I will be forever grateful that I have the privilege and honor of calling him ‘Coach.’”

Lawrence, 68, became LFSC head coach in 2018, succeeding Maureen Sheehan upon her retirement. Lawrence and Sheehan had been partners for 42 years when she passed away in 2024.

“We first met on a pool deck in 1984,” Lawrence says. “I was working in Glen Ellyn (at B.R. Ryall YMCA) at the time and Maureen was coaching at the Lake Forest Swim Club. She was a hall of fame coach, very humble and compassionate, with an incredible work ethic.”

Lawrence joined Sheehan’s staff in late 1984. The LFSC, established in 1958, is a performance-focused USA Swimming member program that encourages its athletes to reach their full potential. It strives for excellence at all levels: local, national, and international. Lake Forest College has served as the club’s home since 1968.

Matt Grevers is LFSC’s most decorated ex-member, having captured six Olympic medals, including four gold medals. LFSC coaches also developed Conor Dwyer (owner of an Olympic gold medal); siblings and two-time Illinois high school state champions Mitch and Rachel Stoehr; siblings and former Puerto Rico Olympians Douglas and Kristina Lennox; and former LFHS swimming coach Carolyn Grevers, who swam at the University of Kansas.

Lawrence, of Grayslake, has coached more than 200 individual Illinois state age group champions, 217 nationally ranked age group swimmers, six world-ranked swimmers, and five future Olympians.

“We try to focus on the big view, emphasizing growth—physical, social, emotional—through swimming and the health benefits of the sport,” says Lawrence, who swam and played water polo at Oak Park and River Forest High School, helping the Huskies’ polo squad capture the 1973 state title as an all-state wing. “You want the kids (beginning at the age of 6) to develop a love of the water and physical literacy, learning how the body works in water versus during dryland workouts.

“I really like teaching the little ones and watching them learn to float and overcome a fear like diving at the start of a race. And there’s nothing like the sight of a smiling kid’s head popping up in the pool, realizing he had just done something right.”

Team USA’s swimming contingent had 28 reasons to beam at the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. That was the number of medals it had collected, including 12 golds.

Team USA’s assistant swimming manager then? Lawrence.

“I’ve been lucky, because swimming has taken me all over the world,” says Lawrence, who was a member of the USA Swimming Board of Directors from 1999–2012 and an Olympic International Operations Committee member from 1996–2014. “My first international trip representing Team USA was to Fukuoka, Japan, in 1995, ahead of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. We visited Hiroshima—such a solemn place.”

Exmoor Country Club (Highland Park) Aquatics Director Cindy Dell, another former LFHS swimming coach, served as an LFSC coach with Lawrence and Sheehan for nearly 18 years.

“Michael is a coach who commands respect,” Dell says. “But he doesn’t just teach swimmers; he also teaches coaches. I became the coach I am because I got to observe Michael and Mo (Sheehan). At the Lake Forest Swim Club, I learned what it takes to motivate athletes and how important it is to put athletes first.

“Michael,” she adds, “is an amazing coach, leader, mentor, peer, and friend.”

Laurel Whittington marvels annually at the time Lawrence commits to teaching and coaching in Lake Forest and to serving USA Swimming in a slew of volunteer capacities.

“He kind of does … everything,” says Whittington, an LFSC coach since 2004 and head manager of Team USA’s marathon swimming at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. “Michael loves to be involved in developing young local swimmers and in governance at the national level. He’s a really good, patient teacher. And those governance opportunities, they’re like hobbies to him, but I know he takes them seriously because he cares deeply about swimming.”

For more information about the Lake Forest Swim Club, visit lakeforestswimclub.com.