American University

4400 Massachusettes Ave. Washington DC, 20016

Programs at American University

Competitive Team

Our competitive team swims year-round. A try-out is required before registering.

Developmental Stroke School

Our Stroke School is devoted to competitive stroke instruction with an emphasis on balance in the water through specialized drills. The program is for swimmer under 14 looking for a supplement for summer league. 

Learn-to-Swim School

Our Swim School has been serving the DC area for over 30 years. We have a wide variety of learn-to-swim classes for ages 3 - 8 years old at American University.

Competitive Team

Coaching Staff

Tim Kelly - Gold 1

Coach Tim has been coaching full time for the past 33 years and first started coaching with the club in 1995 where he coached 3.5 years at the Tyson’s Corner and AU sites. After that, he spent 8 years of coaching at the Collegiate level, at Purdue University and Davidson College. Tim returned to NCAP in the Spring of 2006 as the Head Coach of the American University site. As a swimmer, he was a Sr. National and Division I NCAA qualifier at Southern Illinois University. His wife Abby (formerly Barnett) swam for NCAP back in 1978 when the club first started and his kids (Jordan and Madison) learned to swim and swam for the club.

Andy Rosenthal - Silver 1, Bronze 1

Andy started his coaching career with NCAP in 2016. He is currently the lead coach of the Bronze 1 and Silver 1 groups at the American University Site. He has previously worked with the Silver 2 group at AU and many of the groups at the Holton Arms site. Andy swam for NCAP while growing up and went on to swim at Middlebury College, where he specialized in distance freestyle and butterfly. Andy also spent 7 years as the head coach of the Rockshire Sharks in the MCSL.

Taylor Ploy - Silver 2, Bronze 1 Assistant

Coach Taylor is joining NCAP for her first season this Fall 2023.  Taylor grew up in Pittsburgh, PA where she started club swimming at the age of five with West Allegheny Aquatic Club. She spent a portion of her career at Boeing before she decided to go back to her true love of coaching.  She has coached USA, USMS, and High School teams in Sonoma County, CA and south Georgia. 

Her most recent team, Tiftarea Tidalwave, was a small market team in Georgia that managed to go toe to toe with bigger teams in Atlanta despite being in a rural area of Georgia. They have produced several Division I swimmers and had a 2022 Georgia LSC 100m breaststroke champion. In 2023, Taylor was selected by Georgia LSC to coach the Age Group Zones Team.  She also still loves to compete and won a 2021 Speedo Salt Series Open Water Championship.  In her time away from the pool, Taylor enjoys camping and watching movies with her wife Amanda and chasing their two cats, Beerus and Canyon.

Kyra Thordsen - Bronze 2

Kyra Thordsen is coaching our AU Bronze 2 group.  She is currently a senior at American studying Political Science, Spanish, and Philosophy with hopes of attending law school after graduation.  Kyra is originally from the San Francisco Bay Area and has been swimming competitively since she was 5, in addition to playing water polo, diving, lifeguarding, and coaching from age 14 on.  Her love for working with young athletes when she started junior coaching her summer community team and working with high school athletes after moving to DC in 2021.  

Kyra coached the Bronze 2 group alongside Coach Andy during the 2022-2023 season and she is excited to work with this group of athletes again to improve their technique, boost their confidence, and build a lifelong love of swimming.