Meet Our Coaches
Aspire Aquatics is please to have assembled a high caliber and talented coaching team: Team Head Coach Karen Ammon, Head Senior Coach Mark Torres, Lead Coach Mia Wood, and Assistant Coaches Kadin Denner, Ellie Furuta, Rosie Jump and Tylen Phillips.
The Coaching team will operate collaboratively and in support of each other. Coach Karen is the head coach of all practice groups. Emphasis will be on providing technical instruction in a supportive, respectful, and community-minded environment. She will apply her coaching philosophy, expertise, and strategies to all age groups and seniors in partnership with the coach on deck to create top-down collaboration. Coach Karen will have a presence on deck with all practice groups, while serving as the primary coach on deck for Age 9-12. Swimmers will enjoy reasonable coach to swimmer ratios at Aspire Aquatics. The coaching staff will scale to meet the size and technical needs of the team.
Karen Ammon · Team Head Coach
Email: [email protected]
Coach Karen serves as the head coach of Aspire Aquatics of Colorado and the primary coach of Ambition and Confidence practice groups. Karen's impact in the community is broad and far-reaching, currently serving as the head coach of the Mountain Hi Swim League (MHSL) Wheatlands Sharks swim team and formerly serving as the head coach of the Grandview High School Girls’ swim team.
Spanning 31 years of coaching experience, Coach Karen has coached all abilities of swim athletes from water safety and learn to swim programs to National Top 16 age group swimmers and High School All Americans. Prior to founding Aspire Aquatics, she most recently served for 15 years as the 9/10 Age Group coach and Director of Age Group Development for Colorado Stars.
Coach Karen brings an undeniable love and discipline of the sport to her swim athletes, swim families, and community. Her respectful, disciplined, and nurturing approach to teaching swim excellence develops the performance excellence, character, leadership, and team camaraderie of her athletes and feeds their growth mindset. She has earned the broad respect and loyalty of her athletes, swim families, and CSI community.
Coach Karen is married to Dale Ammon, well known in the Colorado swim and USA Swimming communities in his roles as official, CSI Board Member, Western Zone Non-Coach Director, and member of USA Swimmer Board of Directors. She and Dale have raised four children, all swimmers and young coaches who graduated from Grandview High School and various universities. She now has six lovely grandchildren to spoil and care for.
Teams coached by Coach Karen include:
- Southshore Sharks [formerly Wheatlands/Chapparal Sharks]
- Grandview Girls and Boys High School Swim Team
- Colorado Stars
- Special Olympics Colorado
- Brookdale Swim Club
- Naperville YMCA
- Hillsborough Hurricanes YMCA
Mark Torres · Head Senior Coach · University of Florida
Email: [email protected]
Coach Mark Torres is the primary coach for the Strength, Inspire and Elite groups.
Native of NC, but living in CO since 1999. Married to Jennifer, a Dr of Audiology, he has 2 daughters Addi and Rhyan.
As a swimmer, I began at the age of 5. In high school qualified for Junior Nations in backstroke and IM. He swam at the University of Florida, a member of the 89-90 SEC Championship Team and qualified for Senior Nationals in 100 Backstroke. He still swims and competes in Masters meets in CO and USMS Nationals.
He has been involved with swimming ever since his college career ended. He has coached Summer League Teams and High School teams, most recently Assistant Coach at Valor Christian. He has also mentored college bound swimmers as well as teaching Private Competitive Swim lessons.
Mia Wood · Lead Coach · Colorado School of Mines
Email: [email protected]
Coach Mia Wood is the primary coach for the Hope group.
Coach Mia is a Grandview High School All-American in the 500 Free, a University of Mines multiple record holder, multi conference champion (200 Free, 500 Free, 1000Free, and 1650 Free), CSCAA 11 time All-America, First Team Scholar All-American, a four time NCAA Division II qualifier, and an NCAA silver medalist in the 1000 Free.
She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Engineering Physics and a Master's degree in Engineering & Technology Management. Coach Mia is currently working as a Technology Consulting associate at RSM and we are thrilled she is also continuing her swim passion as a coach to our young athletes. She brings tremendous talent and energy to the deck.
Kadin Denner · Assitant Coach · California State University Bakersfield / University of Winsconsin Eau Claire
Email: [email protected]
Coach Kadin has swam for 15 years with 11 years being in year round.
He swam on Colorado Stars under various coaches with Karen being one of them. After high school, he briefly swam at the Division 1 level at CSUB (California State University Bakersfield) where he studied electrical engineering. He transferred his sophomore year to UWEC (University of Wisconsin Eau Claire) where he studied Computer Science and continued his swimming career.
He has always been a distance swimmer doing the 400 IM, 500 free, and 1650 free as his main conference line up where he became a total of a 9 time WIAC individual conference champion and a school/conference record holder in many events. As he looks for a more permanent job, he is excited to be coach on Aspire to help show more athletes how great the sport of swimming can be.
Email: ellie@aspireaquatics.com
Ellie began swimming for Karen at the age of 10 as a summer swimmer. She quickly fell in love with the sport and committed to junior coaching soon after. Working her way up, she became an assistant coach for Karen’s summer swim team for 2 years and then continued to coach in college for her club team. Throughout college, she continued to coach at a local Y. She has been coaching with Aspire for 2 years.Ellie swam as a club swimmer throughout college and brought home 1 national title with her swim team. She spent her final year at Northeastern coaching and swimming. She loves to be in the water and especially loves freestyle.
Rosie Jump · Assistant Coach · University of Vermont / University of Denver
Email: [email protected]
Rosie is a Colorado native and has been a swimmer for 13 years starting on Colorado Stars under Coach Karen and moved to DSA through highschool. She represented Colorado multiple times as an age group swimmer as an All Star and Zone Team member. During high school, at Regis Jesuit High School, she was a finalist at state in the 500 free, 100 breastroke, and 200 IM, and a two time All American. She went on to swim briefly in Division 1 at the University of Vermont. Rosie recently transferred to the University of Denver where she is studying psychology, biology, and chemistry. Rosie has helped with stroke clinics for summer league and is excited to get more involved in the coaching side of swimming.
