Since her earliest days around the pool, Julia Wheeler has fulfilled many roles at the Brant Artistic Swim Club (BASC), including youth member, mentor and coach with an eye on dedicating more time as an official in the near future.
After 45 years with the club, Wheeler, who has spent the majority of her life in Brantford, explained her start in the sport and eventually getting more involved in coaching.
“I became part of the club when I was eight years old [and] the reason I fell into it was by chance. I was a kid that was going through the Red Cross swimming program and got to a point that I had aged out and wasn’t allowed to go on to anything else due to my age until I was a little bit older. So, my parents led me into the synchro program, thinking it would just be something fun to keep me in the world of aquatics,” she recalled. “I did some provincial level swimming on a team, swam with the duet, and also swam the solo events. I also had the opportunity to swim at a national level as a soloist. At that point, our club wasn’t offering a national level team in Brantford. But, during that time I had many podium finishes. As I moved to high school, I started to assist and help with recreational programs. And once I was finished university, I focused more on coaching at a more in-depth level, [and] taking the necessary courses to actually coach competitive athletes.”
However, the coach reminisced on various accomplishments throughout her youth.
“Provincially, I had a lot of different age group podium finishes, and I know my duet partner Jacinda Sturgeon, who I’ve still remained friends with, we had some amazing medal performances over the years when we were in high school and also being top three in Ontario as a figure swimmer…those are huge accomplishments that I’ve always been proud of,” she said. “But for me, most of my pride has come out of my coaching years, because we have gotten the club to such a different level and I really feed off of that even more so now than I did as an athlete, but that hunger still exists.”
Wheeler, who has also enjoyed a career as a financial advisor, was back to the BASC after her daughter started to take an interest in the sport.
“During the time my kids were born, I stepped back a little bit and did my masters coach. I also took a little break from BASC, where I was involved in the sport and coaching for other clubs, and then when my daughter started to swim, I got more involved with the BASC again, and first stepped back in as the president, and then back in as their head coach, when our coach moved on for a more permanent position with another club, and then this past year, I just became an official with Ontario Artistic Swimming,” Wheeler noted.
While Wheeler has coached many athletes through the years, she discussed one of the coaches that inspired her.
“I had the opportunity to work with some great people over the years. I had a lot of young grassroots coaches in Brant. [but] we were in the early years of the club when I was younger, so there was a lot of change going on….[so] being able to train externally away from the BASC, I had some really great mentors. I trained out west during one summer in a training camp, and to be able to be exposed to Olympic athletes and international coaches, and then bring that experience back to the club. One of the coaches I ended up meeting was Sheilagh Croxon. She was an Olympic coach for Canada, and I had the opportunity to work with her as an athlete at a training camp. And then later on, I did my coaching certifications under her, and she’s still somebody that I will reach out to and ask advice, and have pulled her back in to even do some mentorship with parents going through sport right now with young athletes in our club,” she reflected. “And some of my athletes have moved on to be high performance coaches and other clubs, and one of them is Stephanie Breitigam, who I coached around 23 years ago. Now I look to her for advice and I rely heavily on her when I’m stuck as a coach or needing support. In this case, the roles have changed, and I love the fact that I can now call my athletes, my previous athletes, now my mentors.”
Being a veteran leader at the BASC has given Wheeler an opportunity to be part of many successes as well as seeing the sport grow at a grassroots level.
“Everybody’s aware of Claire Scheffel in our community, but to be part of the coaching team that put her on her first provincial team, before she moved off to swim for a national level club that was huge for us…we went to a national qualifier four years ago, which was out in Saskatchewan…and to be a mom of an athlete who gets to go on that national stage was huge for me and I get emotional thinking back on that because you don’t get a lot of opportunities with your kids like that…and to share that moment as a coach that was huge for me,” the coach reflected. “And 2025 was a pivotal year for our team….we positioned ourselves to come back and really be a strong team…making it to the Ontario Winter Games. Also, I’m really fortunate to be working with a this year team that has something special and a group of parents that support what our team is doing.”
However, along with the support of parents and families, the community has been essential in the success of the BASC.
“We’re fortunate…our pool at the Wayne Gretzky Centre is wonderful. We have a facility that is ideal for the sport of synchronized swimming [and] offers so many different facets that make it an ideal centre to train at. But we’ve been supported in other ways….in the last year, we were recipients of a lot of grants that helped us to pivot and move our programs forward…for education around safe sport concussion management for example. We couldn’t have done it without the support that we needed and the external coaching resources coming in.” she noted. “We are also very fortunate that our community partners, like the City of Brantford and the County of Brant, providing grants last year for us to excel. We also are really lucky, because I find that the world of aquatics is great in terms of the partnerships in our community and how we support each other. KW Diving and the Brantford Aquatic Club have both been great in providing coaching resources where we’ve fell short in some areas because of geography and where we are in access to the type of coaching we needed. We’ve been able to trade off some services, and that’s been really great.”
Nevertheless, being a coach for many years, Wheeler stressed the importance of relationships and developing the youth for successful lives.
“At the end of the day we can teach the technical stuff in sport and that’s important…but if we’re going to keep kids engaged, it’s about the relationships [and] recognizing their strengths, areas of development are important, and celebrating the small successes along the way. I think that one of the things that’s changed is just that we have to listen more, because coaching used to be just directives. You tell somebody what to do, and the expectation is you do it, and that was the end of that. But for modern-day coaches, we have to take a step back and listen to what the athletes are telling us…because it’s so easy to lose them at a young age. For me, I want to keep athletes in sport, because typically those who stay in sport are better in school. They have more success in the job field when they’re older. There are so many things that we’re just laying the roots for their future,” Wheeler explained.
Also, the veteran artistic swimming coach has witnessed the sport evolve over the last four decades.
“I’ve watched it go from what we would if we were to look back at the Olympics in the 1980s where in Synchro looked a lot simpler than but we’ve watched it evolve and become more difficult as an athlete, more difficult to coach. For me, it’s been 45 years of continuous learning so you can stay current with the sport and reach out to the people who know it best. And that’s part of what keeps you excited about it is that it’s always changing and evolving and getting more difficult,” she stated. “The challenge now is how to bring back programs that are going to challenge the athletes and keep them current with what they need to know. Of course, there are some things that never change, like the grassroots aspects of the sport, but the different disciplines that it’s tied to over the years. I mean, acrobatics today and the sport are not what they were when I swam and I was younger, so we’ve had to really alter the way that we think about the sport and we train the sport.”
With the BASC closing in on its 50th anniversary, it is a time that Wheeler is relishing.
“Carlene Sisler started the club around 50 years ago with a group of parents when it was known as the Brant Synchro Club….A few years ago, for our 45th anniversary…we had her back to visit, and she came and watched our Year-End Show. It’s exciting to know that these people in the community who were all part of our team at one time are involved in one way or another,” she said. “I’m excited that we’re just getting started [and] I feel like we’re just hitting a big stride. Our community is growing, and there’s so much potential for the sport to continue to grow here because of the facilities we have and the support. There are so many kids that come through the doors…. they’ll sign up for an eight-week class that they found out about on Facebook by chance they find us and realize, they didn’t know this type of club existed here. So, I think we are still a hidden gem, and although we’re 50 years old, I feel like we’re just getting started.”
Despite the steady and positive growth of the sport in Brant County as well as on the national level, there are some hurdles to overcome.
“Sometimes I feel that we still struggle to get the recognition the sport deserves. Sometimes I think people still look at the sport and think that it’s just cute….but they aren’t aware of how many different athletic aspects are involved….when you look at everything that is poured into the training and the cross section of so many sports [and that the] swimmers train so hard….It’s one of the highest number of hours per week of training of any sport in the Olympics. A lot of our Olympic athletes are training six to eight hours a day, six days a week,” she stated. “I think we’re getting better and better at being recognized as a physical sport. But I don’t think people realize the cross section of other sports that synchro involves like water polo, swimming, and gymnastics. For training, we are doing track and field, and weightlifting….and diving, because we have diving coaches that are teaching our acrobatics. We also have water polo coaches that are helping with conditioning as well as swim team coaches too.”
As for the future of the BASC, Wheeler has been looking forward to passing the coaching reigns to the next generation while she has her sights set on new opportunities to grow with the sport.
“Over the next couple of years….one of our goals is to broaden our provincial-level programs so that we can offer more national stream opportunities. We currently have five athletes who are working in the high-performance program with Ontario Artistic Swimming. That’s exciting for us, because we’re getting more recognition on a high-performance stage [and] our goal really is to make sure that we’re getting more exposure in that area. That’s great because the training trickles back with our coaches and our athletes who are attending. We also would like to broaden our adopted program, where] we are giving athletes who have different and unique abilities in our community the opportunity to be part of our club,” she reflected. “Personally, I would like to see our coaching team grow, because at some point I need to step back. I’m going to have to hand that off to somebody, and we have a lot of really great people on our team. I want to get to a point where I can walk away and feel good about the work I did here and in the last year that is part of my retirement plan, is that down the road [so I would] like to focus on officiating. I took on the role of an Ontario official as a tech controller this year, which is a new role that came out with the new rules a couple years ago. So, my long-term plan is to step more into the officiating role.”
