News Detail
Former SJ23 Head Swimming Coach Returns
Former SJ23 Head Swimming Coach Dana Abbott is returning to again lead the Lion Swim Team for 2021-2022, announced by Athletic Director Billy Jackson.
Coach Abbott comes to St. John XXIII with 37 years of Head Coaching experience at the High School level including 25 years (1980-2005) at Katy High School as head swimming coach, and 12 years at SJ23 (2006-2018), having been hired to start the first swim team at SJ23.
In Abbott’s first dozen years at St. John XXIII, the girls team won three TAPPS State Championships, including back-to-back wins in 2012 and 2013, as well as four second-place finishes and two third-place finishes. The boys team was Regional Champions in 2016 and also State runners-up.
Coach Abbott has served in many leadership and support capacities at the state and national level, including having been the only person to have held all four elected offices in TISCA, the Texas Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association (President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer), is a two-time Past President of NISCA (National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association) and currently serves as NISCA’s Journal Editor, Constitution Chair, and International Programs Director. In 2016 Coach Abbott received the prestigious Male Coach of the Year Award for all sports in TAPPS (Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools) and has recently been selected as the sole coach-inductee for 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 by the Katy ISD Athletic Hall of Honor. He has received the TISCA Theron Pickle Lifetime Achievement Award, the NISCA Outstanding Service and Hall of Fame Awards, and will receive the NISCA Collegiate-Scholastic Award in March 2022.
Quick Facts:
Four-year letter winner and holder of multiple team records at Tulane University, and U.S. Masters National Top Ten finisher and Top Ten nationally ranked swimmer. Named three times to U.S. Water Fitness Association’s “Who’s Who in Aquatics” (2002, 2003, 2005). Competitive swimming clinician in Texas, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama; clinic speaker in Texas, Kansas, New Jersey, New York, Indiana, and the ASCA World Swimming Coaches Clinic; presenter at XII International Scientific Congress “Modern Olympic Sport and Paralympics Sport and Sport for All” in Moscow, Russia, 2008.
He served on the facilities design committee for competitive swimming facilities in the Katy Independent School District, 1996-2005, all pools (KHS, CRHS, MRHS, SLHS, MCHS, and OTHS, and Jordan HS) are based on his original design recommendations in 1996.
In his spare time, Abbott likes classic cars, Corvettes, and Volkswagen vans, enjoys airshows and has flown in all the “Big 4” WW2 bombers (B-17, B-24, B-25, B-29), rides his bike, plays with his two rescue dogs, and the past two summers has raised and released close to 150 Monarch butterflies. He is also skilled in discovering world-famous eateries on SJ23 swimming meet trips.
St. John XXIII College Preparatory forms the hearts and minds of young men and women in a Christ-centered community dedicated to academic excellence, the pursuit of virtue, and service to others in the Tradition of the Catholic Church.
