Kevin Auger had spent years in the pool swimming his heart out for the Guelph Marlin Aquatic Club. The 1980 Olympics were going to be his moment. At 19, he had qualified for the 200m butterfly and the 800m freestyle relay team. He had the sixth fastest butterfly time in the world. Suddenly, Canada announced it would join a U.S. led boycott of the Moscow Olympic Games to protest the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan.
“You can look at it and say I did all this hard work for nothing, but I didn't look at it that way,” said Auger. “I looked at the individual experiences I had in practice, the friends I made, the trips I got to go on and various things that came out of swimming like the scholarship I received to Indiana University. I realized it was more about the journey than that one great moment.”
It is that type of positive attitude that led to a stellar swimming career at Indiana where Auger was a two-time, Big Ten champion. He had dreams of the 1984 Olympics but injured his left arm and was unable to qualify. After earning his degree, he moved seamlessly into the coaching realm.
He helped coach at Indiana for a year before coming home to coach the Guelph Marlins from 1986-1996. At that point, Auger and his wife Jeanne moved to Illinois to be closer to her family. Auger quickly became a coach for the Wildkit swimming program and the Evanston High School swim team. That led to a 26-year stay winning three club state championships with the Wildkits, and three state championships and one national championship with Evanston HS.
Auger has helped build the Wildkit program to more than 180 swimmers. His has been inducted into the Illinois Swimming & Diving Hall of Fame (2017) and the Midwest National High School Hall of Fame.
“It's funny, I've had kids first in the nation and I love coaching those kids,” said Auger, “but I also love seeing kids improve like crazy, hitting times they never dreamed they could reach. That is fun.”
