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By Jay Spivey

For the Clemmons Courier

Sara Kellam had been shadowing Sandy Thomerson as the swimming coach at West Forsyth the past two seasons.

After Thomerson, who has been the head coach since 2017, made her resignation official after this past season, the Titans were looking for a new coach. That person is Kellam.  

“She was looking at a different job potential and that didn’t pan out the way she wanted it to,” Kellam. “With me being new and we had 10 seniors this past year, we all kind of ganged up on her and convinced her to stay an extra year.” 

Initially, Thomerson was going to resign after the 2023-24 season, but she decided to stay to go out with the seven senior girls the Titans had this past season.  

“Sandy did a great job,” Athletic Director Mike Pennington of West Forsyth said. “But Sandy’s been kind of planning this for a while. She was going to step away, so Sara’s ready and she’s excited. They do a good job.  

“And I spoke with Sara a couple weeks ago, a few weeks ago we had a coaches’ meeting and she’s raring and ready to go.”

Learning under Thomerson was beneficial to Kellam. 

“It was fun,” Kellam said. “Sandy and I worked really well together. Getting to learn from her, her experience is invaluable to somebody who wants to stay within the coaching realm and who is on the newer side to it.” 

For Pennington, it was a no-brainer for Kellam to step into the head-coaching role for the Titans. 

“I like somebody who loves coaching,” Pennington said. “And we want our coaches to be that way. Sara very much fits that mold of loving swimming and loving coaching.” 

In essence, Kellam ended up being a coach in waiting after Thomerson had planned to resign. 

“Sandy does a great job,” Pennington said. “She does a great job with swimming. She’s very organized. It’s one thing about being an assistant coach and knowing your sport, but then to be a head coach and still be able to coach, to be able to do all of the ancillary paperwork, bookkeeping things. Sandy is excellent at both. 

“And the good thing’s she’s groomed Sara and Sara’s known there was a decent chance it was going to happen. She’s helped her get ready. That’s a good thing, too.” 

After learning and preparing the past two seasons to be a head coach, that experience will be put to the test almost immediately. 

“I mean luckily Sandy has taught me everything that I need to know, and if I don’t know it, I can call her and keep her on speed-dial for the season,” Kellam said.  

It was just a matter of whether West Forsyth would have needed a new coach this past season or for the 2025-26 season.

“Sara’s very intelligent. Just from conversations we’ve had she was watchful to see, ‘You know, this is how I do this, and this is how I do that,’” Pennington said. “And we said, ‘Sandy was great, but you’re not Sandy, so you’ve got to take the good things she does and make them your own. You can’t be her, don’t need to be her. You just need to be you.’”

Kellam, a 2010 graduate of Forbush in East Bend, picked up coaching while lifeguarding at Jerry Long YMCA when she was in high school.  

“They found out I had a competitive swimming background, and they were like, ‘Hey, do you want to teach swim lessons?’ It just kind of escalated from there.” 

Kellam has continued to coach ever since. 

“I started with teaching swim lessons, and I’ve actually been doing that for 16 years,” she said. “As of this summer, I’m the head coach over at Chadwyck (Windsor Place Pool in Winston-Salem).” 

Coaching is just part of Kellam now, but being an assistant coach the past two seasons at West Forsyth was a teaching experience. 

“They’ve been super-patient with me as I get to know the team and learn how things work,” Kellam said. “I feel it can only hopefully go up.” 

Putting her own imprint on the team as a head coach is important to Kellam. 

“Sandy and I have different personalities,” Kellam said. “I’m a little more laid back. I’ve got four kids, 10 and under. One of my big advantages is kind of going with the flow. I have backup plans, but I try not to let it stress me out too much. We’ll see how it goes.” 

The difference now is that Kellam will be a first-time head coach at West Forsyth with many new swimmers. 

“I think it could be good,” she said. “I’ve got a great group of kids that are still there from the past couple of years. They know a lot of the kids on club swimming that are coming up and getting ready to swim in high school. I think they will be a great asset and kind of create that new team dynamic with a new coach.” 

Another facet of being a high school swim coach is being at a pool rather than the school during practices and meets. 

“Swimming is so unusual, because you’re off-site, to know how that works,” Pennington said. “You have swim practices at some unusual times because that’s just when it’s available. You’ve got two lanes today and you’ve got one lane today. It’s not like back in the day with me with basketball, I knew I was going to have the entire gym at this time.

“Swimming doesn’t do that, so she’s very familiar with all of that because she’s done it and she’s developed a relationship with Jerry Long Y. They’re good to us, it’s a much better situation than if you were breaking somebody in from wherever that might not be as familiar with the way we have to do swimming because we just don’t have a pool on campus.” 

One thing high school coaches must face is the difference it makes to be a part-time swimmer, where that person only swims for the school, versus a year-round swimmer, who swims for both the school and for their particular club.

“I think mainly going to be encouraging the part-time swimmers while not detracting from all of the effort that the year-rounders have put in because they’ve been doing this a long time,” Kellam said. “We want to acknowledge that while also not making the new kids feel like they’re not part of the team.”

Even though school just finished for the 2024-25 year, practice for the West Forsyth team will begin in the fall and the season will go into February of 2026. 

“Hopefully we can keep it strong,” Kellam said. “We’ve taken a couple fantastic relays to states the past couple years. I’d like to build it even more.”