Karli Wilkinson
Swim Coach
“Kudos to Coach Karli. She improved my swim stroke by 50%. Made the rest of the workout a lot easier. Thanks Coach Karli!” – John W.
Coach Karli’s experience in triathlon began after taking a three-year break from competitive swimming while attending Columbia College Chicago. Realizing that she missed competing and ready for a new challenge Karli decided to train for her first sprint triathlon, the Naperville Women’s Triathlon in 2008. “It was an amazing experience to cross the finish line! I’d never been a strong runner before and I had negative split all my miles and came in faster and stronger than any of my training runs. I thought, even after all that.’” Karli came back better and stronger the next year and completed the 2009 HRMS Sprint Triathlon. Last summer, she completed an Olympic Distance AquaBike and swam on an all female relay in the Chicago Triathlon. The relay placed 2nd in its division.
Karli’s competitive swimming experience includes swimming in high school and college and most recently on a master’s team while teaching English in Almería, Spain for the last 8 months. At the Winter Open Master’s Championships of Andalucía Karli won five age group medals for her team, including gold in 100m butterfly and silver medals in both 800m freestyle and 200m butterfly. Bahia went on to win the championship. Karli also won bronze in 200m butterfly at the Open Master’s Championship of Spain and contributed place points to the Bahia del Almeria, which placed 9th out of 126 teams.
Aside from personal success in swimming and triathlon, Coach Karli has had the joy of helping others to reach their goals throughout her seven years of swim instruction and coaching while working for Life Time Fitness. During that time, she has coached both the Master’s Swim team and the children’s Warrenville Warriors team and specialized in private training both beginner and intermediate level tri-athletes and competitive swimmers. Her areas of specialty include stroke assessment, technique training and athlete specific swim-endurance training. Karli is a USA Swimming Certified Coach.
Karli graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a B.A. in Creative Writing and has a Teacher’s Certification from the TEFL Institute. She is looking forward to starting her Master’s in Education next autumn. Coach Karli uses her story telling skills and creativity to help her students visualize and understand technical skills and gain a better sense of body awareness. She enjoys helping all levels of athletes achieve their goals.
