Head Coach John Roy has been leading the WAVE swimming program since his arrival in 2006. Since then, WAVE has grown in size, sportsmanship, and accomplishment. WAVE has proudly won the NC Swimming Open Water Championships, placed a number of athletes on collegiate swim teams, and moved up in the USA Swimming Virtual Rankings under the leadership of Coach John.

Prior to coming to Raleigh, John was the head coach at Bengal Tiger Aquatic Club (BTAC) and Episcopal High School in Baton Rouge, LA. From 1996-2002, Coach John was the head coach of The Baylor School in Chattanooga, TN. In TN, he earned Tennessee High School Women’s Coach of the year, was president of the Tennessee Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association, and chaired the Southeastern LSC in 2002. In 2001, Coach John was an American Swim Coaches Association Award of Excellence honoree.  He has coached Olympic Trial Qualifiers, National Finalists, National Junior Team Members, and Junior National Record holders.

Coach John is a proud graduate and fan of the University of Tennessee. John is married to Nancy , they have a  daughter Maggie, and son Matthew. 

Ed Lower has coached in Raleigh for the past thirteen years. Over this time he has shown himself to be extremely talented at helping swimmers achieve their goals. He was named National Club Swimming Associations "National Co-Coach Of The Year" in 2004 and the North Carolina Senior Coach of the Year in 2002.

Coach Lower believes in developing the entire swimmer. He has his swimmers concentrate on good technique, endurance, speed and power, and he wants his swimmers to improve throughout their swimming careers. He has sent many swimmers to swim on scholarship at these universities:  Davidson, UNC Wilmington, NC State, UNC, Texas, ECU, Naval Academy, Mary Washington, Washington University, TCU,  WVU, Emory, Delaware, Old Dominion, Denison, Mount Holyoke, Catholic, American and Virginia.

Before moving to Raleigh, Coach Lower was a head facility coach for world renowned Nations Capital Aquatic Club. He coached for four years with NCAP  including in the early 1990’s when he helped coach the Olympic gold medalist and World Record holder in the 200 breaststroke. Coach Lower also coached the breaststroke and sprint IM swimmers at the University of Nebraska, Big 8 Champions, while heading up the swim team’s dry land and lactate analysis programs. He has coached swimmers to many top 10 performances, Junior National, Senior National, Olympic Trial finalists and masters swimmers to World record performances.

Prior to working with NCAP he was head coach for 7 years with the Siouxland Sharks, Sioux City, IA and the Galveston Island Swim Team, Galveston, TX.  Lower was head age group coach for 4 years with the Space City Aquatic Team, Clear Lake, TX and for Swim Omaha, Omaha, NE.

Coach Lower graduated from the University of Iowa, with a bachelors of Science degree in physical education, teaching, and coaching. He was an NCAA All-America team member for 3 years, and was the U. of Iowa’s team captain his senior year. He finished his swimming career by qualifying for the 1988 Olympic Trials. Coach Lower lives in Clayton with his wife Melissa and their two boys Christian and Jesse.

Jonathan Bescher originally started swimming in Connecticut where he swam for 14 years and helped coach young swimmers the last couple of years. He then went on to becoming a Manager at NC State where he was able to watch and talk to many great coaches and swimmers.  He graduated from State in 1998 with a B.S. in Applied Mathematics along with a minor in Computer Science. Jonathan then started to help coach at the Garner Road YMCA, where he helped them to 3 straight Division Championships. Along with coaching at the YMCA, he also became Head Coach at the Garner Dolphins and his last year helped them go undefeated and win the Division.

Coach Bescher is now starting his 17th season with WAVE. He has coached all levels within the team. For the first 5 years he has worked with the Senior Level swimmers and in 2006 started working with the Age Group level swimmers. In his time with WAVE, he has help coach many Junior Olympic swimmers, Sectional swimmers and a Top-16 Nationally ranked swimmer and relays ranked in the Top-5 Nationally.  He also has had four swimmers get High Point between the NC Short Course and Long Course Age Group Championships.

In 2018 he will be an Assistant Manager at the National Open Water Select.

He lives in Clayton with his wife Kendra and his dogs and cats.  Jonathan and Kendra have a daughter Kaylea.

Zach Murray began coaching year-round with New Wave Swim Team in 2008 after 4 summers coaching city league in Greensboro.  In 2015 he moved to Nashville with his wife and coached for Nashville Aquatic Club jump starting their seasonal program.  In 2016 he moved to Atlanta and was the head age group coach for Swim Atlanta at Georgia Tech.  For the 2016-2017 season he moved back to Raleigh and returned to New Wave for his 7th season with the team at our Optimist location.  During his career he has coached all ages and abilities ranging from novice to masters, state/sectional qualifiers, state high point winners, zone team qualifiers, national top 10 and state record holders.  While in Raleigh he has continued to support the swimming community coaching TSA teams every summer.

Casey Sink is in her second year with WAVE. She started with Wave in August 2012 as site director and coach at the North Raleigh Christian Academy location. She works with groups ranging from BC to Level 3 at the site.

Prior to working with New Wave Swim Team Casey swam with the Wilson Barracuda Swim Team for twelve years, swam for James B Hunt High school, and then joined the Campbell Swim Team in 2007 to 2011, where she received her BS in Sports Management.  After her collegiate Swimming years she returned to work with the Wilson Barracuda Swim Team for one year, and then joined WAVE in 2012.

Along with coaching with WAVE, she also is one of the assistant coaches for the North Raleigh Christian Academy school swim team.

I am thrilled to be coaching such a competitive, and driven team that strives for excellence.

Bradford Hancock has been a coach for New Wave Swimming since moving to Raleigh from Charlotte, NC in May of 2019. Bradford currently coaches the Gold and Varsity groups at the Optimist Park location. As a coach, he puts great emphasis on creating aerobically conditioned and fundamentally improved athletes that are able to take their next steps to the Pre-senior and Senior groups. Bradford has been a private instructor and camp coach for several teams in Charlotte such as Swim MAC, ATOM and Team Charlotte. He has had success during his first season with New Wave, having 3 swimmers earn 11 medals at NC LC Age Group Champs, as well as an Age Group and Southern Zones Champion.

Before coming to New Wave, Bradford was a 4x NCAA National Champion in Division 2 Swimming at Queens University of Charlotte (2015/16/17/18), where he swam the 50 Free, 100 Free and 100 Butterfly. He was a 3x All-American. Bradford graduated from Queens University in 2018 with a B.S. in Biology with a Pre-Med minor. 

Before being recruited to Queens, Bradford swam for the South Eastern Virginia Aquatics (SEVA) Seahawks from 2004-2014. His senior year he was a USA Swimming Scholastic All-American, and during his time on SEVA he was a VA age group champion, at times ranked top 10/16 natinally in different events, and was consistently one of the top 200/500/1000/1650 Freestlye swimmers in Virginia.

Kendra is in her seventh year with WAVE.  She coaches the Beginning Seasonal and JV group at Optimist.  She has coached with Garner Road Y and ran the lesson program at the Finley YMCA for many years.  While at the Y, she started the Finley Fliers team.  She is also a certified cpr, lifeguard and first aid instructor through the American Red Cross.  

She lives in Clayton, NC with her husband Jonathan.  Kendra and Jonathan have a daughter Kaylea.

Shawn Ryan coaches the Bronze 5:30 and 6:30 groups at Cary Swim Club. He is also the Head Coach for Cary Swim Club (TSA summer league). He brings to WAVE over 20 years of coaching and teaching  experience. He is also available for swimming lessons.