Sedona Race Pace Swim Club head coach Sean Emery knows his job has major responsibilities. Shaping the lives of young people in the 5 to 18 age bracket is an important and heavy task.

Sports are a result-oriented business and Emery has the results. He’s sent swimmers to the Junior Olympics, produced nationally ranked youth swimmers and was on the 2008 state champion Sedona Red Rock High School coaching staff. But now as a coach working with youthful swimmers, his main goal is “unlocking their potential.”

Once that happens, the results, rankings and medals will follow.

“Swimming isn’t a sport that you can just say, ‘well, if they’re destined to be an Olympian it doesn’t matter what they do,’” Emery said. “That’s not true at all.”

The process of unlocking that potential is a rigorous one. As the name of the club implies, Emery implements Ultra-Short Race-Pace Training, which substitutes the traditional high-yardage at low-intensity swim training methods with a lower-yardage at higher-intensity curriculum.

“It helped me get faster and more serious about [swimming],” Junie Spielman, 10, said.

The “sports science” approach is highly intensive, especially at the age groups Race Pace works with.

But when Emery is forced to end a practice after just 20 minutes, due to an incoming thunderstorm, the kids aren’t relieved like a struggling high schooler would be. They’re devastated. They beg their parents for just a few more minutes with their teammates. The fact that this is their lives for hours upon hours each week doesn’t soften the blow of a weather-shortened practice. The kids live for this thing.

“I remember enjoying swimming but not loving it and not knowing what it meant to push myself to another level,” said Lucy Spielman, 13, who swam for another club previous to joining Race Pace. “And then I joined this team and I realized what it meant to work really hard.”

Emery must be doing something right, since each swimmer wants to swim for “forever” or gives a profound lifelong intention to stick with the sport, which is a strong statement coming from a 10-year-old.

“I want to be swimming forever,” swimmer Phoebe Jones, 10, said. “Forever. Until I die.”

“I’ve been on [the team] for almost three years and I really like how it’s going, and I want to be on it for a while,” adds Kaylee McLean, 9.

While the kids have fun and enjoy their practices with their friends, Emery instills key values on the impressionable youth. Values like dedication and perseverance, which Emery says are “some of the best principles that are lacking in our society,” are the standards in which he runs his program.

“Just having those two principles you can dedicate yourself to a higher principle or a job, or getting to work on time. … The culture today and where we’re going … we forget about these things. But they’re always fruitful in life.”

While swimming — relays aside — is often recognized as an individual sport, Race Pace implements a team culture. Because while the club prides itself on its results and producing superb swimmers, Olympic medals and international glory in the pool are clearly only a reality for a very, very few.

“We like to build an aspect of team,” Emery said. “Working with individuals within a high-stress environment to achieve a goal together. And when they do that, they can work with any team. They can work in any organization. Because swimming as a competitive athlete might not be a lifetime thing. It can be but might not be. But they’ll be able to keep that with them. It’s something that is built into them.”

When watching Race Pace operate, it’s obvious that the attempt to create a team environment is successful. In the pool, the athletes laugh and joke together in their precious few seconds of rest between reps. On the small turf hill on the pool deck, parents cheer on the team and converse with each other. After practice, parents offer swimmers rides home and ask about their lives. Sedona Community Pool at Posse Grounds Park feels like just that — a tight-knit community.

Race Pace opened its season Sept. 11 and 12, hosting its first meet of the year. It was a resounding success, Emery said, and the club will now host the Bill Krumm Classic Nov. 13 and 14. He says this event will be much larger than the season-opener and will host teams from all over Arizona.

The races to come, Emery expects, will show the character of the young group he’s managing right now.

“A lot of what we’re seeing in the younger groups, we’re seeing confidence building,” he said, “in the fact that we’re moving out of ‘I can’t and I’m afraid’ into ‘I can,’ which is a powerful statement.”