Auburn High School's Girls Swimming & Diving Team - ROCKFORD'S VARSITY TEAM AWARD

Building a high school sports program is increasingly difficult in the cell phone/video game era. The key, according to Auburn swimming coach Dennis Bullard, is to create a strong team culture.

“I tell the kids that we’re going to work, and we’re going to have fun,” said Bullard, who began coaching at Auburn in 2012. “I’m not a yeller. It’s up to them to be how good they want to be.”

During his time at Auburn, Bullard coached individual swimming champions Lydia Przytulski and Ali Cushing, who helped him bring Auburn’s program into the top third of the conference.

Przytulski, who now studies biology at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, said it was the team culture she enjoyed the most.

“A lot of the better swimmers swim for clubs, and we’d see each other at meets and want to say hi, but the other coaches were kind of weird about it,” she said. “All the girls would just come over to the Auburn side instead of sitting with their own team, because we were fun and friendly. It was really nice getting to know all of the other swimmers.”

Bullard goes out of his way to build camaraderie beyond practices and meets.

“Swimming is a hard sport. But after meets, both teams will go out to eat at Culvers, Beef-a-Roo, Stockholm Inn,” said Bullard, who runs his family’s farm in Boone County. “We’ll take our teams out to the orchard and go on a hayride or out to the farm. It’s always fun to watch city kids on the farm.

“They have fun in and out of the water. That keeps me coming back.”