Scott Swanson
A. Jay Bronson isn’t a stranger to Sweet Home swimming by any means.
He’s been the school district’s swimming pool supervisor since the summer of 2018, and he’s assisted Coach Doug Peargin with the high school team for the past two years.
Now, though, for the first time in 48 years, Bronson is listed as head coach of the Huskies, with Peargin as his assistant.
And that’s just fine with Peargin, who spoke to a reporter after spending the morning bow-hunting.
“I could never do that when I was head coach,” he said. “I went to (Athletic Director Dan Tow) and I said, ‘I want to flip it over, I can just be an assistant to him. He’s younger, he’s more enthusiastic, he’s down here all the time.”
Bronson is no stranger to coaching; in fact, he’s been teaching swimmers since the day he had to interrupt his own college swimming career after coming down with bacterial meningitis while at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas.
He grew up in pools in Sedona, Ariz., where he swam at Red Rock High School for four years before moving on to college.
After moving from active swimming to coaching, he attended Northern Arizona University, where he began coaching the Flagstaff Peaks, which, he said, is essentially the club team’s women’s program for Northern Arizona. That developed into full-time coaching.
He obtained his teaching license and went to work at his own high school in Sedona, teaching English, government and history, and coaching the high school and swim club teams.
Bronson said he and his wife, Bailey Bronson, were worried about their future as teachers in Sedona. The salary situation was not good, he said, and Sedona, a small but popular tourist town about the size of Sweet Home, had a shrinking population. They weren’t certain their jobs would exist in 10 years.
“My wife and I decided it was time to get out of Arizona education because education pay wasn’t going anywhere,” he said. “That was right after the #RedforEd movement,” in which Arizona teachers walked out of their classes in record numbers for six days, wearing red and advocating for higher teacher pay and more K-12 education funding.
Bailey was from Elgin, in eastern Oregon, and they decided to check out opportunities in Oregon. She accepted a job in Mill City teaching high school history and English and they moved to Stayton, Bronson said.
“We said, ‘OK, we’ll find something close-ish. I looked in Salem but really didn’t find anything, and then this (aquatic director) job popped up and it was perfect.”
They later moved to Sweet Home, and Bailey now teaches social studies at Sweet Home High School.
Bronson got into teaching because he loves swimming, he told The New Era when he arrived in 2018.
He started assisting Peargin with the swimming team the following year and has slowly increased responsibilities for coaching, though Peargin is still very involved.
“Last year I was more of his assistant; I took over the younger kids. This year we’ve just been kind of splitting the duties a lot more.”
He said taking over for a coach who has been at Sweet Home for nearly 50 years and has a 77% win record is “ridiculous.”
“There’s no way to fill those shoes,” Bronson said. “It’s just ‘Do the best you can.’ I’m lucky enough to have been part of the program for a little while. I watch him in action. You know, I’ve been on the deck with him.”
Peargin tells it differently.
“Yesterday, or the day before, we were kind of running on my workouts. I said, ‘Hey, baby, from here on out you’re writing them up. If you’ve got a question for something, here I am.’
“What I’ll do is I’ll go around and help kids when they need it. I may say, ‘Hey, Lanes 1 and 2, you’re with me for the next 20 minutes. And he keeps the rest. It really works well.
“He knows what he’s doing. He’s the only guy since I’ve ever coached here who is coming in to help me who has had this extensive of an aquatic background.”
Peargin is known – and respected around the state – for his ability to get athletes to peak at just the right times, at district and then at state.
“I’ve heard the secret formula,” Bronson said. “I’ve seen it in action once or twice. We’ll go through this year again.
“It’s just an honor to be on the staff and to kind of take the next step forward.”