Killer Whales Swimming

10/18/2026

Spooky fast and so much fun! 🎃👻🏊‍♀️ Our Bronze and Silver groups had a blast at their Halloween meet! Thank you to all the volunteers and families who helped make this possible for our athletes. We love making memories together as Killer Whales! 🖤❤️

10/17/2026

10/13/2026

COACH SPOTLIGHT: Assistant Coach Will Rastatter

Will is our newest coach to the Killer Whales, having joined us this fall!

Will started swimming at the age of 8 after watching the 2008 summer Olympics where Michael Phelps won his 8 golds. He swam through my childhood, all the way through high school, where he was apart of two PIAA state championship teams, while earning individual and relay podium honors as well as being apart of the 2017 200 freestyle relay state record team. After high school, he attended George Mason University, where he specialized in sprint free and butterfly events. During his collegiate career, he earned 14 Atlantic 10 conference medals while also being apart of his schools first ever A10 championship team.

While in college, he received a degree in rehabilitation science, with a minor in blindness and visual impairments. When he was just 13 years old, one of his best friends’ moms asked if he could help at a blind and visually impaired sports camp. Almost 15 years later he is still very involved with Envision Blind Sports to achieve their goal of providing sport and physical activity for individuals who are blind and visually impaired. Due to his experience with Envision Blind Sports, it brought Will back to the Pittsburgh area to pursue his education further to become an Orientation and Mobility Specialist as well as a Teacher of the Blind and Visually Impaired. He now works as a teacher of the visually impaired at the School for Blind Children in Oakland.

Will has been very eager to get back into the swim world since taking a hiatus since graduating college. He loves the sport of swimming because it is a sport where your individual effort, commitment, and success doesn’t just impact you, but your team as a whole. He loves that in swimming you alone are in charge of your own success, no matter the coaching or the support. At the end of the day, the choices you make in the water are the only things that are going to help you achieve your goals.

When he is not working, in classes, or coaching, you can find him outdoors hiking, traveling, golfing, spending time with friends and family, or eager to find his next adventure to go on!

10/06/2026

COACH SPOTLIGHT: Assistant Coach Emily Magoc

Emily started swimming at age 4 and swam all throughout college, co-captaining her division III women’s team for 2 years. There, she built her love of swimming long and swimming far - pacing is her thing! After college, she started open water swimming longer races like 5 and 10k and loved it all.

She started my coaching career doing lots and lots of swim lessons, then coached for a USA team outside of Detroit during and after her masters program. She came back to Pittsburgh for nursing school and once she became a nurse, swimming seemed to be in the rearview mirror. But she missed the smell of chlorine, so she started swimming for the Flying Fish Heads. There she was introduced to the KW family in the fall of 2024 and here she is, predominantly working with the Bronze and Silver groups!

Outside the pool, you can find her hiking with her dog Maya, traveling with her husband, playing with her baby niece, riding her bike, going to baseball games, or baking cupcakes and cookies.

She firmly believes that there is so much more to swimming than just swimming - the comradery; the time management and organizational skills; the challenge, both physical and mental - and she is honored to be able to be apart of these kids’ journeys to finding what swimming can do for them, in and out of the pool.

10/05/2026

For the third time this year, Jackson has set a new team record! Today, at our First Splash meet, Jackson broke the 11-12 boys 50 SCY fly record with a 26.96 after breaking the LC record this summer! The previous record of 27.09 was set 7 years ago.

Congratulations Jackson on an incredible swim, you’ve played a huge role in rewriting much of the 11-12 boys fly records! And what a way for KW and Jackson to start off the season!

10/01/2026

Introducing our September 2026 Swimmers of the Month!
Bronze: Gavin Ishak (1st slide)
Silver: Glenn Stotler (2nd slide)
Gold: Fritz Rusche (3rd slide)
Senior: Hayden Kang (4th slide)

Each of these athletes have shown great improvement in a variety of areas, from their practice attendance and habits, always seeking feedback, to being a lane leader and setting a great examples for all their teammates.

Congratulations again to our KW Swimmers of the Month!

10/01/2026

We asked our Senior Group yesterday who would be the most likely to survive a zombie apocalypse. Let’s just say the results were highly entertaining!

09/28/2026

Coach Wynne and KW Board Member, Libby Ernharth, were in Denver this past weekend for a conference and had the honor of attending Golden Goggles! Both Libby and Wynne got to learn a lot about coaching and club management to continue furthering the development of our team! Even more fun, they both got to meet lots of Olympian swimmers and coaches, both past and present!

All the Olympians wished us luck this season and are rooting for us! Go Killer Whales!

09/26/2026

COACH SPOTLIGHT: Assistant Coach Matt Harris

Coach Matt started with the Killer Whales in December 2023. He is also an assistant with the Fox Chapel HS swim team, working with the varsity group on deck and in dryland, and he coaches with the Flying Fish Heads masters club.

At KW, Matt coaches primarily with our Senior group but can be seen helping with dryland or around deck with all groups. Come meet day he is usually there early rigging the pool, and you will often find him running the Dak. Away from our pool he chairs the Allegheny Mountain LMSC, the governing body for adult competitive swimming across western Pennsylvania, and was recently appointed to the U.S. Masters Swimming National Governance Committee. He is a USAS and USMS Official, a USATF and RRCA Youth Coach, and Race Director for the annual Fox Chapel 5K. You will know him as the British one on deck, and you will definitely hear him. Listen for the “3, 2, 1, boosh!”

As a swimmer, Matt swam competitively from a young age and raced at regional championships, later becoming a podium swimmer in Armed Forces Cadet Swimming in the UK.

Outside of the pool Matt is an Ironman finisher and an ultra runner, with the Moab Red Hot 55k among his favorite races. He collects big-city marathons and has New York, Honolulu, Chicago, Eugene and San Francisco on the list so far. He is also a student pilot, and the best of his adventuring is done with his two boys.

Matt chairs the board of the September 11th National Memorial Trail Alliance, the 1,500+ mile trail network linking the 9/11 National Memorial Museum, the Pentagon and the Flight 93 Memorial. Professionally he works in AI, leading open source AI work at Mozilla. He is also a passionate supporter of Pittsburgh’s cultural life and serves on the boards of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, believing the same thing about the arts that he believes about swimming: they are lifelong experiences that everyone should have access to.

Matt cannot wait for a fun and fast season with the Killer Whales!