He also has his phone.
That wasn’t always the case when he set his fifth and sixth conference records last year. That’s the peril of having your mom as your head coach.
“She will take my phone if I do something bad," Taylor said. "My club coach, he can’t do that. My club coach, he doesn’t yell at me as much, either.
“It hasn’t happened at all this year,” Taylor said of losing his phone privileges, “but last year it happened a lot. I was a bad kid last year.”
Amy Taylor has coached Camden since age 7, his second year swimming for the Rockford Rays at the YMCA.
“I just kind of lingered on the deck, watching, that first year,” Amy Taylor said. “I had never coached before, but I knew swimming. I had started out as a YMCA official. I asked if they had any coaching spots and they needed an 8-under coach.”
So she coached Camden for year at the Rockford and then Belvidere YMCAs before coaching him at East.
“I have been his official coach for 11 years,” she said. “It was good at the beginning. The last couple of years, sometimes he will say, ‘Why would you do that at practice? That’s dumb.’
“But I have a lot of research. I do know what I am doing. He just doesn’t like to admit that.”
Camden said the only other high school swimmer he knows who is coached by his parent is Harlem star Jeremy Mueller.
“It can be a delicate situation,” Harlem coach Todd Mueller said. “When your kid is acting up and not following what you want as a coach, you need to switch roles and say as a parent you have to respect what I say, no matter what you think about it. It’s a split personality. You have to switch the hat.”
Amy Taylor, who swam for Freeport High under famed local coach Mike Pisula, taught her two sons how to swim in the wave pool at Magic Waters.
All her kids were good swimmers. Maddie, now a teacher in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, swam for NCAA Division III UW-Stevens Point and set East’s school record in the 200 individual medley. Nolan, a sophomore at Northern Illinois, swam on a club team.
Their success made it natural for Camden to swim. In his first full year with the Rockford Rays he qualified for state in the 25 free, shortly before his 7th birthday.
He was hooked. He was a swimmer.
But he also played basketball for five years. He started to golf in eighth grade and reached sectionals as East’s top golfer this fall.
He exploded as a swimmer his sophomore year after sprouting five inches to 6-7. That is the year he broke his first four NIC-10 records.
“That was really unexpected and exciting,” Camden Taylor said. “I also knew there were some flaws in my stroke and I could do even more.”
At 6-foot-9 today, everyone assumes basketball is Taylor’s sport.
“It’s getting annoying,” he said of people asking him if he plays basketball. “It’s every single day.”
He wishes he could, but it’s the same season as swimming.
“I really wanted to play in high school, but I couldn't do both, Taylor said. "I was a lot better at swimming than I was at basketball."
Height helps in swimming almost as much as it does in basketball. Taller swimmers tend of have larger hands and feet, which act as natural fins, plus their longer arms help propel them through the water.
“You can’t coach height,” Harlem coach Mueller said. “Camden has always been talented no matter how tall he was. Now, his height has enhanced it.”
So has his mom.
Women don’t coach many men’s sports, period. Much less ones where their star is their son.
“When Maddie broke that 200 record at sectionals in her last high school meet, she was crying. I was crying,” Amy Taylor said. “I try not to do that with Cam. He would be embarrassed. I put the coach hat on more with him.”
Camden broke the conference records in the 100 backstroke, 200 IM, 100 butterfly and 500 free as a sophomore. And added the 100 and 200 free as a junior. If he breaks the 50 free and 100 breast stroke on Feb. 11 — NIC-10 records can only be set at the conference meet — he will hold every conference individual record.
After that, he will try to be the area’s first state swimming champion in 20 years. If he does, he can thank the person who used to confiscate his phone.
“I don’t believe some of the things she tells me to do,” Camden Taylor said. “I don’t really trust them. But I have to. It works out in the long run. I never expected to go this fast. Her coaching got me this fast.”
Contact: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com, @matttrowbridge or 815-987-1383. Matt Trowbridge has covered sports for the Rockford Register Star for over 30 years, after previous stints in North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont and Iowa City.
