As Emma Mehan finishes coaching the Mason High girls swim and dive season and gets ready for the boys season, she recalls the relationships and lessons coaching has taught her.
Mehan is a senior at Michigan State majoring in history education. She was a swimmer at Adrian High School before she moved to Mason and arrived at MSU. She also swam competitively for the Bohn Pool Waverunners and was a part of the 2021 team that won its first Ohio Michigan Summer Swim League championship under Coach Robert Petkus.
Mehan enters her third year as one of the coaches for both the boys and girls swim team while starting to help with the dive team. She said she wanted to learn more about diving and offered to help with the kids.
“When my family moved up here and my sister started here, I kind of just needed something to do and I was like, ‘What’s a good way to make connections?’ And also I realized I missed being part of a team a lot,” Mehan said. “I just decided to email the head coach and say, ‘Hey, you need help? I can help,’ and I’ve been here since.”
While coaching boys and girls swimming and being a senior taking classes while getting ready for graduation in May 2026 feels like a lot, she is able to manage quite well. Additionally, Mehan is a student teacher at a different school. She teaches sixth and seventh grade.
Mehan this year has been able to balance schedules with a softer workload.
“Right now it’s not too difficult because I basically have two, quote unquote, easier classes and then student teacher stuff; so I teach Fridays and then I’m here every single day after school, so I just go from teaching to here,” Mehan said. “Last year when I had a little bit more of a packed schedule, it was a little harder, but I find ways to make it work because I really love what I do.”
Mehan’s three years of experience have given her things to improve upon. One thing she thinks she’s developed well in her time as a coach is her ability to make connections and form relationships.
And now that she is a student teacher, forming those relationships is key to her job. Coaching has helped her be able to develop these bonds with her kids.
“It’s become a lot easier to form relationships. I started coaching before I started teaching so it made making relationships with my students a lot easier because I have this great group of girls in the fall and this great group of guys in the winter; they were like my first children, they were my lab rats,” Mehan said. “I got to experiment and be like, ‘Okay, is this how you be cool? Is this how you get people to pay attention to you?’
“Coaching has kind of been my foundation for teaching, it’s been so fun.”
Some relationships Mehan has made are with senior swimmers Lizzy West and Vivian Chase. Mehan has coached them her entire time at Mason.
Chase is a multi-league winner for the Bulldogs. She has finished first on her team in scoring each of her four seasons, and holds three individual records in the 200 yard individual medley, the 50 freestyle, the 100 breast and one relay record, the 200 medley. Chase says Mehan has done a great job with balancing being a coach and a college student.
“She’s brought a positive atmosphere to everyone, she gets us all to cheer and gets us excited for our races. She will see people doing some things wrong with their technique and she will help fix it, improve it,” Chase said. “She just totally takes school behind and focuses on being a coach while she’s here, it’s great.
“With her being a student teacher now, she has grown that way too, being able to talk to us better.”
West has improved each year at Mason in her average point total for swimming. She usually swims the 500 yard freestyle and freestyle relays. In her freshman year she scored 12th on the team in average points with 227.55. That increased to eighth her sophomore year with 297.40, fourth her junior year with 390.20, and fifth her senior year with 368.65.
West thinks Mehan has done a great job improving as a coach since she has been at Mason, and how she handles having to miss time.
“Anytime where she isn’t able to come to something, she definitely tries to be here as much as she can, but then she will let us know ahead of time too,” West said. “I think her swimming experience gives her another view on how she does stuff. She is actively trying to learn how to teach us, she is definitely trying to gain a lot from our coach as well.
“She’s gotten more confident with things and has adapted her past swimming to how we do things here.”
Mehan has reminisced about her swimming days and thought about the help she would have liked to receive as a swimmer. She is able to reflect on what she’s done as a coach and being able to have a different perspective on swimming.
Mehan has also developed skills to deal with parents since becoming a coach. She says the parents at Mason have been wonderful to her, but it is a skill needed to learn for student teaching.
It has guided her to grow and be an adult in life.
“When you’re in high school, you’re with your grade group, and then you get to college and you are with your age group, so being an adult to me, I see what the parents are doing and they’re like, ‘You don’t have to call me Ms. or Mr.,’ and I’m like, no I’m still 10 years old I feel like I have to,” Mehan said. “It’s been a really great in-between phase.
“I am starting to realize I’m an adult, I have power.”
Mehan hasn’t noticed much of a difference in attitude or demeanor between the boys and the girls swim team when coaching them. The only difference she states is the team’s different choice of music. She credits Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield as one of the boys top song choices.
Mehan loves what she does, coaching at Mason, and student teaching elsewhere. She sees a future at Mason High School if an opening is presented. She would love to keep coaching and teaching post graduation at the school that gave her this coaching opportunity.
“I don’t know if there will be an opening soon, but the kids want me to work here and I want to work here. Mike and Connie they can have the spotlight, or anyone else that is more qualified then me, they can have the spotlight first,” Mehan said. “I am here more to learn how to be a good coach right now than to try to actively be a head coach.
“Obviously I do what they ask and I try really hard.”
