Juli Zamora Rivers or ‘Coach Z’ started teaching swimming lessons in 1995 in her hometown of Brownsville, Texas. Over the next 8 summers, she worked for a Red Cross Learn to Swim program where she taught hundreds of children to swim in South Texas during her teenage years and through college. Soon after graduating high school, Juli started coaching club swimming in South Texas, and eventually began coaching with Lone Star Aquatic Club based in Round Rock in 2003 while in college. As a club coach, she coached National top 16 swimmers and relays, as well as USA Swimming Zones and All-Star Teams. She was named the Head Coach of the Anderson High School Swim team in the fall of 2006 and had a consistently competitive 6A program in Texas for 12 high school seasons with many swimmers and relays named to the All-State and All-American Teams, and a team that often ranked top 20 in the state. She was named District Coach of the Year nine times, and though she was a passionate coach, she stepped away from competitive swimming when her son was born in 2018.

In addition to coaching club and high school swimming, Juli has also coached summer league swimming with the Balcones Woods Blue Wave for many years, a team of over 200 kids of all ages the NW Austin area. She teaches at Anderson High School where she has taught many different subjects there for the past 18 years; Juli truly enjoys teaching children of all ages in many different areas of life, education, and fitness. And though most of her time around the pool has been spent around competitive Swimming- teaching children to swim, and helping others learn to teach children to swim is something she’s always done, and stems from a desire to teach more children to swim than she could ever take on herself.

Juli has spent a lifetime around education and swimming, and combined with her experience teaching teenagers and creating effective team environments- starting a swim school with quality instructors is something she is very passionate about. In 2023, after developing a school model and trying (unsuccessfully) to rent other pools, we decided to build the Teal Seal Swim School in our backyard. Juli’s style of teaching is very much her own, and was developed through many years of teaching lessons in various environments, coaching competitive swimming, a deep understanding of education, the water, child development, exercise physiology, and her natural ability to teach all children. She truly has experience teaching and coaching all levels of swimming, from toddlers, to State Champions and All-American athletes, and carries strong values in character development and fostering leadership from her years teaching and coaching. The aim of Teal Seal Swim is to grow, and to be able to offer lessons to all people, as well as stroke development and a place to improve technique in a fun environment. We have so many ideas for water based programs in the future, and hope to be able to offer scholarship lessons in order to serve our community for years to come.