Calphin Staff
Year-Round Staff
Xiaohong Wang - She was given the honor by the media as one of the five "Golden Flowers" in the China swimming arena. Xiaohong began swimming at 10 and was selected to be on the China National Team when she was 16. Her first major accomplishment was swimming in the finals at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul. After that, she took away four gold medals at the 1990 Asia Games in Beijing. In the 1991 World Cup Finals, Xiaohong became the world champion in both the 100M and 200M butterfly events. After more than ten years of extremely intensive trainings and competitions, she finally achieved the silver medal in the 200M butterfly event at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, Spain.
Retiring from her competitive swimming career, Xiaohong came to the University of Nevada in the United States for further study in early 1994. Between 1995 and 1998, she serves Carson City Aquatic Club as the head coach. Her best swimmer of the club, Lauren Costella, won several Senior National Champions and was qualified for the USA Olympic trial in 2000. Recognizing her extraordinary achievements in swimming, Stanford University awarded Lauren with a full four-year college scholarship in 2003.
Because of her outstanding accomplishments in both competitive swimming and coaching, Xiaohong is currently honored as a certified ASCA level 4 coach. Note that the level 5 coach is the top level ranked by ASCA (American Swimming Coach Association). Xiaohong is currently running the lesson program at the Calphin Aquatic Club, offering the best value and quality in swimming instruction in the Bay Area.
Brian Hu - Former champion of the China National University Games. He is the leader of the swimming division of the Northern California Chinese Athletic Federation, and has won many swimming events every year in Bay Area Chinese community swimming competitions for the past 10 years. He loves swimming and enjoys coaching very much and now he is ready to offer his expertise in swimming to our Bay Area residents.
Steph Lee - She swam for Malaysia University when she was young. She is a very experienced swimming instructor and she has been with Calphin Aquatic Club since 2004.
Tim Lai - He joined our team in the beginning of 2008. He loves kids and kids love him. He is very creative in terms of teaching swimming. He will use different methods to help each individual and make sure everyone in his class gets enough attention, and learns correct swimming techniques.
Miranda Wang - She has more than 10 years teaching experience in swimming, and she loves to see what swimmers can accomplish under her instruction. She is very capable of teaching all levels of classes from our introductory Bubbler to the competitive Racer.
Erica Wang – She is a former National Level swimmer in China. She has been teaching/coaching swimming for more than 7 years and she loves what she does, helping swimmers improve their skills in the water.
Natalie Cheng – She has been competing since she can remember. Her experience has been with summer league and year-round swim teams all around the bay area as well as the captain of her high school team. She enjoys instructing because she loves being a part of the learning process and seeing her students succeed. She has been teaching at Calphin since 2005.
Anthony Dai - He has been a competitive swimmer for more than 7 years in a local year round swim team. He knows what it takes to become a good swimmer, now he brings his swimming expertise into our program. He started working with us since last year 2008.
Joseph He- Joseph is the owner of Calphin Aquatic Club. He currently responsible for the business development and management of the school. He has been teaching swimming lessons for more than 6 years, and he is one of the most popular instructors in our program.
Randy Gurnee– He began competitively swimming in Tokyo, but has been teaching and coaching swimming since 1991 all over the Bay Area. His successes include multiple national All-American swimming acknowledgements and helping coach a local EBSL champion team. He also helps manage the Calphin Aquatic Club, when he’s not in the water.
Sophy Shum– She has had successful competitive experience since 2000 and has been teaching through programs and privately in Fremont since 2004. She enjoys teaching the little ones in the first few levels because they are so much fun!
Ivan Ung– While continuing his successful swimming career, he has been imparting his fresh outlook on instructing for many up and coming Calphin swimmers.
Wilson Cheng - He has been a swimming instructor since 2006.
Seasonal Staff
Karina Ung – She has been competing since she was 12 and found success in the summer leagues and as the captain of her high school team. She was actually a student of Coach Wang before graduating on to become an instructor herself in 2004.
Mason Ung– He has been coaching with CDSS for about 5 or 6 years. He enjoys teaching students how to swim because he’s able to impact their lives in an important way.
Rob Kong– He really loves & enjoys being at the swim school everyday. He thinks the indoor pool makes it more comfortable for everyone because they don’t get roasted by the sunlight. Most importantly, the kids are just amazing and most of them just enjoyed being in the pool.
Kevin So– He has 7 years of competitive swimming under his belt and he enjoys other sports like running and cycling. He participated in his first triathlon in 2009, placed 3rd overall and 1st in his age group. Teaching kids has been a great pleasure, he loves seeing them learn a lot and but still have plenty of fun.
Stephanie Chen– The best thing for her about coaching is every time she finishes teaching a class they go home smiling and telling their parents what they did today. It gets her excited and shes always satisfied with her work afterwards.
Sheeva Ghassemian– She is our resident instructor at the Mission Hills Tennis Club for the summer.