The International Swimming League has announced Dean Boxall, Byron MacDonald, Ben Higson, and Rocco Meiring as the Commonwealth coaches for the ISL All-Star Match in December.
The match, which will happen on December 19th, will be the ISL’s first match back since the cancellation of the 2022 season. The meet will be a four team format of the United States vs the Commonwealth vs Europe vs the Rest of the World, and today they announced the first four coaches for the Commonwealth.
Dean Boxall is one of the most well-known coaches in the world of swimming, coaching some of the best Australian athletes in the world right now including Mollie O’Callaghan and Lani Pallister. He is the head coach of St Peter’s Western, and at the 2024 Olympics, St Peters Western swimmers were involved in four of Australia’s seven swimming gold medals.
Byron MacDonald is Canadian, and has ISL coaching experience from his time as the Toronto Titans head coach, one of the teams added for the 2020 season. He is also the head coach of the University of Toronto. He is the primary coach of Olympic medalist Kylie Masse.
Ben Higson comes from Scotland where he is the head coach at the University of Stirling’s high-performance program which has been responsible for coaching athletes like Duncan Scott and Angharad Evans. He also has ISL experience as a member of the London Roar’s coaching roster in the original ISL seasons.
Rocco Meiring is the final coach for the roster, and he comes from South Africa, where he has coached Tatjana Smith, who recently made her return to competitive swimming, and newly minted world record holder Pieter Coetze.
The ISL also said in their release that the first “star athletes” for the Commonwealth Team will be announced “very soon”, and that the coaches for the other teams will be announced in the coming weeks.
While we don’t know exactly who will be racing yet, though the coaching roster gives us a hint, we can likely rule a few athletes out. AP Race and Fast and Female have both announced clinics on the same day as the ISL Match.
The AP Race clinic will be held in Borehamwood, England at the Haberdashers Boys School on December 19th and 20th. It will feature clinics from Luke Greenbank, Lauren Cox, Adam Ramsay-Peaty, Filip Nowacki, and Alex Cohoon.
The Fast and Female clinic will be held at Eton College in Windsor. Freya Colbert and Freya Anderson will both be leading aspects of that clinic on December 19th.
