Tag Archives: Athletic Coaches

Olympic champion Samantha Livingstone was also a teacher and coach

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Samantha Arsenault Livingstone earned an Olympic Gold Medal in 2000. She later went on to teach science and coach swimming in Gwinnett County, Georgia. Photo credit: Samantha Livingstone

Oftentimes exceptional athletes become educators and/or coaches in our nation’s pubic schools. This is certainly true of Samantha Arsenault Livingstone, an Olympic Gold Medal winner who went on to teach and coach in Georgia.

Samantha was born on Oct. 11, 1981, in Peabody, Massachusetts. Her prowess as a student athlete became evident even when she was a young child. When she graduated from Gardner High School in 1999, her coaches recognized her potential as an Olympic athlete. By then, she had won several individual state championship titles, and she was instrumental in helping  her school garner two consecutive Massachusetts State team championships.

By the time she was 18, Samantha realized her potential when she qualified to compete in the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. At these games she and her team members helped set a new Olympic record in the 4 x 200 meter freestyle, winning Gold Medals in the process.

After she returned home from the Olympics, Samantha enrolled at the University of Michigan, where she joined the swimming and diving team. In her sophomore year of college, she transferred to the University of Georgia, and she became a member of the swimming and diving team at that school, too.

Samantha earned both her Bachelor’s degree and her Master’s degree in Science Education from the University of Georgia. In addition, she is certified as a facilitator of Mindful Sports Performance Enhancement and is also trained in STARR (Stress + Trauma Activate, Release + Rewire) protocols.

After earning her degrees, Samantha accepted a position as a science teacher at Norcross High School in Gwinnett County, Georgia. She taught there for six years, from 2005 to 2011. She also coached swimming for two local organizations, Gwinnett County Summer programs and Swim Atlanta.

In 2016, Samantha founded Livingstone High Performance and the Whole athlete Initiative (WAI), an organization dedicated to building mental health support systems for individual athletes and athletic teams. Learn more about this by clicking on this link: WAI.

Over the course of her career as an athlete, Samantha has earned many accolades. She was named the NCAA Georgia Woman of the Year in 2005, and received the NCAA Top VIII Award the same year. She garnered the Joel Eves Award at the University of Georgia for obtaining the highest GPA for all the athletes in her graduating class, and was voted to the CoSIDA Academic All-America 1st Team. In 2018 she was inducted into the Greenfield, Massachussets’ Bay State Games Hall of Fame in recognition for her lifetime of sports achievements as a participant in their annual sporting event.

Science teacher Soichi Sakamoto coached Olympic swimmers

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Former sixth grade science teacher Soichi Sakamoto from Maui, Hawaii, became a swim coach to Olympic swimmers. Photo credit: Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation

Many fine classroom teachers also earn acclaim as athletic coaches. One of these is Soichi Sakamoto, a science teacher who also became a swim coach to Olympian athletes.

Soichi was born on August 6, 1906. In the late 1930’s, he taught sixth grade science and health at Puunene School on the Hawaiian island of Maui. The school was built in 1922 on ten acres of land donated by the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company.

At first, Soichi didn’t know anything about coaching a swim team, and his team members consisted of the children of poor sugar plantation workers. Nevertheless, the  inventive teacher established the Three-Year Swim Cub in 1937. His goal was to guide his athletes to the Olympics within three years. The indefatigable coach was able to achieve his goal of creating a team that qualified for the US Olympic team; however, the 1940 Summer Games were cancelled because of the outbreak of World War II.

To get his student athletes to their goal, the innovative coach developed a training regimen involving the use of interval training. As a form of resistance training, Soichi used area irrigation ditches to train his athletes to swim against the current. In addition, he used pulleys and weights to build upper body strength in his young swimmers, also an innovation for the times.

Eventually, Soichi became the Swim Coach at the University of Hawaii, where he served from 1946 to 1961. He also served as an Assistant Coach for the US Olympic Swim Team from 1952 to 1956. Over the course of Soichi’s career, many of his athletes competed in the Olympics, where they earned gold, silver, and bronze medals.

For his work as a swim coach, Soichi earned international accolades. He was inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame, and the American Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Fame. He is also a member of the Sports Circle of Honor at the University of Hawaii.

This superlative coach passed away on Sept. 29, 1997. He was 91 years old. To document the story of this Chalkboard Champion, a book detailing his life and career was written by Julia Checkoway. The biography, published in 2015, was entitled The Three-Year Swim Club: The Untold Story of Maui’s Sugar Ditch Kids and Their Quest for Olympic Glory. The volume is available on  Amazon.com. You could also read this 2003 article published abut him in the Star Bulletin.

WA teacher Stephanie King garners prestigious NEA award

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High school English teacher Stephanie King of Granger, Washington, has garnered a 2025 Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence. Photo credit: Yakima Herald-Republic

There are many excellent educators working in American public schools, and I am always excited when I get to write about one of them. Today, I am writing about Stephanie King, a high school English teacher from Washington. She has been named one of five recipients of a 2025 Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence by the National Education Association (NEA).

Stephanie has been a teacher at Granger High School in the Yakima Valley city of Granger for 16 years. She also serves her school district as a girls varsity and middle school soccer coach. Her student population is comprised of predominantly Hispanic, multilingual, and economically disadvantaged students.

This amazing education helped her students publish a book entitled We Are America Granger: Voice of the Nation’s Future, which explores the students’s experiences in their home town. The volume was published through the national We Are America Project. “Being able to have my students be able to write their stories about what the American experience is like for them, and to highlight what it’s like here in Granger for them as teenagers and seniors last year, it was phenomenal to have the published final book in hand,” declares Stephanie.

The Horace Mann Award for Teaching Excellence recognizes outstanding educators for demonstrating exemplary leadership in and out of the classroom, showing expertise in their instructional practices, advocating for students and the profession, demonstrating a commitment to equity and diversity, and engaging their communities and supporting other educators, according to the NEA Foundation website.

As a Horace Mann Award honoree, Stephanie will be featured in a mini-documentary which will be premiered at the NEA Foundation Salute to Excellence in Education Gala on Feb. 13, 2026, in Washington DC. In addition, she will receive a $10,000 cash prize. Although the cash prize is intended for her personal use, this Chalkboard Champion has indicated she plans to invest part of it back into her community to fund athletics programs.

 

Matilda Mossman: The health and Pe teacher who became an award-winning basketball coach

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Former high school health and physical education teacher Matilda Mossman became an award-winning university basketball coach prior to her retirement in 2021. Photo credit: Tulsa University

Many outstanding college coaches launched their careers as physical education teachers in one of America’s public schools. One of these is Matilda Mossman, an award-winning high school basketball coach who also served as the former Head Basketball Coach for the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Matilda was born on Aug. 7, 1956 in Campbellsville, Kentucky. After her graduation from high school, she earned her Bachelor’s degree in Physical education in 1970 and her Master’s degree in Education in 1980, both from Western Kentucky.located in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

After earning her degrees, Matilda launched her career as a health and physical education teacher at Normal Community High School in Normal, Illinois. She also served as the girls basketball coach there. She worked at the school from 1994 to 2001.

The next year, Matilda relocated to Norman Oklahoma, where she served as the assistant girls basketball coach at Norman North High School. That year, her team completed the season with a 22-4 record and advanced to the Class 6A state semi-finals.

The next year, Matilda was named the Head Basketball Coach at Norman High. She served in that role from 2002 to 2011. During those years, her teams logged an overall record of 191-53 for a winning percentage of nearly 80%. During her tenure, Matilda’s teams qualified for the Oklahoma Secondary Schools Athletic Association (OSSAA) Class 6A State Tournament in the last eight of her nine seasons, and they won eight straight regional championships. In fact, Matilda led Norman High to the state title in 2005, and runner-up in 2010.  For her efforts, she was named the Conference Coach of the Year three times, while earning Regional and District Coach of the Year honors twice.

In 2011, Matilda was appointed Head Basketball Coach at the University of Tulsa, where she served ten seasons. She took over a five-win team and in just her second year won a conference championship and advanced to the NCAA Tournament. She retired from coaching in 2021.

“My entire life has evolved around being a basketball coach. And I have had the time of my life!” Matilda declared at the time of her retirement. “Mark Twain once said, ‘Find a job you enjoy doing and you will never work a day in your life.’ That is certainly what I have done,” she concluded.

Remembering Chalkboard Hero Michael Landsberry

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Michael Landsberry

Junior high school mathematics teacher and veteran Michael Landsberry sacrificed his life to save as many as 30 students from a teen gunman. Photo credit: Public Domain

Sometimes it is sobering to remember what a heavy responsibility we teachers have when it comes to protecting our students from harm. And there are many examples of heroic educators who have paid the ultimate price to protect their kids. One such hero is Michael Landsberry, a junior high school math teacher from Reno, Nevada.

Following his graduation from high school in 1986, Michael served in the United States Marine Corps where he had risen to the rank of corporal. He served two tours of duty in Afghanistan, and later became a member of the Nevada Air National Guard.

After his discharge, Michael attended college at Nevada State University, Reno, on the GI Bill. There he earned his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics in 2001. Following his college graduation, Michael accepted a teaching position at Sparks Middle School in Sparks, a suburb of Reno, Nevada. In addition to being a math teacher, he also coached basketball, cross country, track, and volleyball, and he served as the girls soccer coach at Sparks High School. Michael quickly became a beloved teacher known for pushing his students, but doing it with love and compassion.

On October 22, 2013, Michael was getting ready for the morning bell, when a 12-year-old student suddenly opened fire on his classmates. After the first student was shot, the chalkboard champion’s military training in kicked in. He calmly walked toward the shooter, putting his hands up in a motion to try to talk the youngster into giving up his gun. The student shot him in the chest at point blank range. Michael later succumbed to his injuries, but his heroic actions gave the other students on the playground time to run to safety. He is credited with saving as many as 30 lives that day.

For his heroism, Michael’s name has been inscribed on the Memorial to Fallen Educators at the National Teachers Hall of Fame in Emporia, Kansas.