Shelly Patton joined Marist Swim & Dive as an assistant swim coach in the fall of 2025 for the 2025–26 season.
In her first season, she helped coach the men’s and women’s swim and dive teams to multiple school records, including a MAAC conference record. At the 2026 MAAC Championships, she helped lead both teams to a pair of runner-up finishes. For the women’s team, it marked their highest finish since 2019, as they led three out of four days of the meet. The men’s team secured its second consecutive runner-up finish.
The women’s team led the meet until the final day, ultimately finishing runner-up by just 10 points. The men’s and women’s teams combined to break five individual and three relay records, produced four individual conference champions—including one in a new MAAC-record time and two freshmen—and recorded six top-three relay finishes.
She also helped guide a diver to the NCAA Diving Zones, marking the first qualification for a Marist diver since 2020.
Patton provides training to all groups while primarily working with the sprint and backstroke swimmers. She also assists with operations, compliance, and recruiting.
She brings a decade of high-level swimming experience as both an athlete and a coach. Prior to Marist, she served as an age-group club coach in Colorado and Nebraska, training multiple All-Star, Zone, and Far Western champion swimmers, as well as Colorado state champions and finalists. She also spent time as an elite technical instructor for SwimLabs. Patton has extensive experience providing private lessons and continues to work one-on-one with her athletes, utilizing the tenets of the Alexander Technique to improve habitual movement patterns.
Before returning to the swim world, Patton worked in Los Angeles as an editor for commercials and short films and as a camera assistant on sets for major production companies, including Hulu and Paramount. She continues to draw on her passion for film, using her creative and filming background to assist with technical analysis and drill work.
She also spent time as a test engineer at Northrop Grumman, working in a quantum physics lab, and served as a project manager for several programs, organizing multi-million-dollar, year-long initiatives involving dozens of engineers. She continues to incorporate her passion for science and the scientific process into her coaching.
Before her professional career, Patton was a lifelong competitive swimmer. She was a multi-time Conference USA finalist and a Conference USA champion while competing at Rice, helping the program win a conference title in 2014. During her time at Rice, she broke two individual school records as well as several relay records, in addition to setting multiple pool records. She transferred to Rice after her freshman year at Northwestern, where she posted multiple all-time top-10 times and set a pool record before suffering a midseason injury.
Patton graduated from Rice University cum laude with a degree in Kinesiology and Sports Medicine—one of the country’s top programs—and was named to the Conference USA All-Academic Team. She was also a Dean’s List honoree at Northwestern during her time there.
A native of Littleton, Colorado, Patton competed for the University of Denver Hilltoppers club team. She was a 10-time finalist at both long course meter (LCM) and short course yard (SCY) Junior Nationals, including multiple top-four finishes. She qualified for the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials in three events (100 back, 200 IM, and 400 IM), qualified for long course nationals in six individual events, won Sectionals, and was part of multiple sectional-winning relays. She also set multiple Colorado state records during her career.
