After serving as head coach for the Sedona Red Rock High School swim team as well as the Sedona Swordfish club team for nearly three years, Dan Morse is moving on to another job in another country.
Morse’s life has taken him from Rhode Island to New Hampshire to Nevada to Arizona. The next move will be much further. He will be moving to coaching for ONEFlow Aquatics, which is based out of Neckarsulm, Germany, near Stuttgart. He will be overseeing the age group team, which focuses on kids age 18 and younger. He will specifically be working with the 13 to 18 year olds, while overseeing the coaches of the age 12 and younger group. He’ll also work as an assistant for the pro team.
The opportunity came about for Morse when a friend of Jack Fabian — who Morse swam for in college and later coached with — called Fabian asking for a recommendation. Fabian recommended Morse.
“They reached out to me — I wasn’t even planning on moving there,” Morse said. “I’m sad to go so early, but I kind of had a big opportunity that I couldn’t pass up.”
Morse came to Sedona in spring 2018. He began coaching the Swordfish and then the high school swim team the following season.
There were a number of success stories for both during his tenure. For the Swordfish, he was especially proud of getting Swordfish swimmers Andrew Tate, Carlos Lattanzi and Emma Warner into sectionals. He was also happy to get Warner and Tate onto college swim teams. Warner is on the Northern Arizona University swim team while Tate has agreed — though not yet officially committed — to swim for a college team next year.
Morse’s final meet coaching the high school team — the 2020 state championship meet in November — was probably the best in his tenure. Lattanzi won a state championship in the 200-yard individual medley and the team of Lattanzi, Tate, Cody Brefeld and Eric Schrader won a state title in the 200-yard freestyle relay.
Additionally, while she swam for Mingus during the high school season, Warner also won a state championship in the 100-yard breaststroke in 2019.
Morse identified the three seasons coaching the high school team as among the best coaching experiences that he’s ever had. That applied to the state champion swimmers as well as the newcomers.
“High school was some of the most fun coaching I ever had in my life,” Morse said. “We had a couple of kids win state championships, between the Red Rock kids and Emma at Mingus. That was the most fun time of year. Getting the guys racing, getting the girls racing. It was fun to have kids try out who had never swam before. High school season was a great time. It was a lot of fun.”
Morse said that one of his highest hopes at his new job will be getting some of the kids into the Olympics and getting to coach on the deck there. But in the short term, his expectations are a little more modest.
“I got a two-year contract and I hope it goes really well,” he said. “I’m not going to try to look past that. I just want it to go well.”
Morse’s final day with the Swordfish will be Monday, Dec. 21. After that, he’ll return home to New England for Christmas and then head off to Germany after the first of the year.
While his time in Sedona was relatively short, he’s leaving it with fond memories on both a professional and personal level.
“We managed to get a lot of kids on the younger team,” Morse said. “We have a lot of Masters swimmers. I just developed a lot of good relationships here on the club team.”
“I was grateful for them to have hired me,” he added. “I had a really good time in Sedona. I got to meet a lot of really good people between the swim teams, my ultimate frisbee group, working at Red Mountain. I’ve just got to meet a lot of really good people here.”
