Amber Dunlap ‘25
The Gordon College Swim Program has clearly had an impact the lives of Jen and Pete Bayreuther. The pair are not only the new coaches for the 2024-25 season, but they are also Gordon Swim alumni.
“We met on the swim team,” Jen said. “I was a sophomore, he was a freshman…it was one of the first practices of the year [2003].”
Now, over 20 years later, Jen is the head coach and Pete is the assistant coach. In these roles, the Bayreuthers wanted to recreate the positive experience they had when they were on the team, and that meant having one clear focus.
“This season has been a huge push on just making it feel like a family,” Jen said.
This concept of family has not been lost on the team members. Junior swimmer Ella Schissler has noticed the family dynamic that Jen and Pete have been able to maintain despite the team almost doubling in size, thanks to a large freshman class.
“Our team to begin with already felt like my family,” Schissler said. “I wasn’t sure on how we were going to keep that [tight-knit connection], and I think having a family be our coaches, and be around us all the time, has made it a lot easier for us to be a family even as our team is getting bigger.”
Working together outside of their family is not new to the Bayreuthers. The couple have pursued a variety of small businesses over the years, from a camper renovating business to an Etsy shop for custom crib bedding.
“We have always loved working together,” Pete said. “We know how to build things together…and we’re pretty confident in each other’s strengths.”
The couple’s ability to work well together as a team has been beneficial to their skills as coaches. They have complementary personalities, which is important to the swimmers.
“There’s things that Coach Jen is really able to connect with people on, and then there’s things that Coach Pete’s really good at connecting with people on,” Schissler said. “There’s somebody to go to for all of it.”
More specifically, Pete says Jen is an incredible strategist when it comes to organizing times, splits, relays, and meet programs. Swimmers often go to her for more race-specific and technical advice.
Jen says Pete is very well spoken and always has the right words to say to the swimmers. He is the one the swimmers turn to for emotional encouragement.
“I, like, forgot that technically Coach Jen is the head coach and Coach Pete is the assistant coach,” Schissler said. “They split things so well.”
This is also true when it comes to balancing coaching and parenting. Jen and Pete have three daughters, ages 8 ½, 11 and 13, and they attend many of the practices and most of the meets.
The girls have become part of the Gordon Swim family, and Pete says that the swimmers have become natural mentors for them.
“They [the girls] have a different relationship with every single person on the team,” Pete said. “That has been one of the biggest blessings.”
This bonding also occurs beyond the pool deck. The Bayreuthers have invited the team to their house for meals on multiple occasions.
These gatherings often become fond memories for the swimmers. One memory that sticks with Schissler is when Jen and Pete brought the team over to carve pumpkins.
“We went to their house after a Saturday morning practice for breakfast in October,” Schissler said. “The girls are obsessed with Christmas music…and it was a really unseasonably warm day, so it was a really funny combination of summer weather, with a fall activity, and Christmas music.”
Overall, this season had been a notably successful one for the Gordon Swim Team. It all came to a close the weekend of Feb. 14 when the team traveled to New Jersey for their Championship Meet, which they had been preparing for since their winter break training.
“Championships [was] a celebration of a season’s worth of training, it [was] not the stress of…all that,” Pete said. “They put in the work, they put in the time, [Champs was] an opportunity to shine.”
And shine they did. At the meet, the team collectively broke 10 Gordon College Swim records, some of which had been originally set over a decade ago.
“It was a lot of fun cheering everybody on and seeing especially Coach Jen watching the races…the way she was cheering was almost like she was swimming with everyone…which was very sweet,” Schissler said. “It’s encouraging to see their coaching style paying off in such a big way.”
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