Talking with Katie Zaferes about her new athlete development training group
What is the AUXO Collective?
When Katie Zaferes graduated from Syracuse University, she was recruited into USA Triathlon’s College Recruitment Program (CRP), which targeted runners and swimmers who had the makings of an elite triathlete. She was then lined up with a camp, connected to a coach, and spent about a year-and-a-half in Arizona in a daily training environment developing her skills and her engine for triathlon.
When you look back, it’s easy to see that many of the women who came out of the CRP have excelled at the global level. But finding a training group for World Triathlon athletes, especially one to help bring them up to that elite point, has always been a challenge. And these days there simply aren’t very many daily training environments (what are often called DTEs) based in the U.S. that focus on World Triathlon — though there are a few in the works. And there are even fewer led by female coaches. That’s created a gap between the young promising athletes and the WTCS level — acutely notable for female athletes coming out of the NCAA programs.
“I just feel like the DTE was so critical to my success,” said Katie.
This was part of the reasoning behind launching the AUXO Collective, which will serve as a new USAT-backed daily training group for those development athletes.
In some ways it’s similar to Project Podium, which was created to specifically target college-aged male triathletes, but AUXO won’t just include one gender.
So, I talked to Katie last week about the project to get a few questions answered.
What is the AUXO Collective?
“We’re hoping to fill that gap between being almost a pro athlete to being competitive at WTCS,” she said.
While the focus of the squad is certainly on women, it will be a co-ed training group.
“I benefitted a lot from training with Tommy [Zaferes],” she said, and from doing workouts with the men in her group under Joel Friel — though workouts would be adjusted or adapted for each individual, there was something to learn from each other.
The young(ish) athletes will be based in Cary, North Carolina, will train together daily with her overseeing their training and development. They can also take classes at UNC-Charlotte — those athlete who are funded through the program will have classes available for free, and the non-funded athletes will have the option of in-state tuition — but Katie doesn’t advise a full class load. Because the focus is on truly progressing towards being a world-class professional triathlete.
How is the group funded?
Funding is coming from the U.S. Performance Center in Charlotte, North Carolina — and so the grant money is tied specifically to that location. (The performance center there hosts different national teams, like taekwondo, rugby.)
While there’s been talk on-and-off about something like this for awhile, Katie’s recent retirement and home base in Cary, North Carolina — combined with her husband, Tommy’s, current role as USAT’s talent ID coordinator — brought everything together.
How many athletes and what kinds of athletes will be part of the group?
They’ll be looking to flesh out this first cohort with 10-12 athletes ages 18- to 25-years-old.
The focus is on Talent ID athletes — ie. single-sport athletes with a background in at least one of the other sports, who meet USAT’s “nationally competitive” criteria for talent identification. (You can see the criteria times by scrolling down here and clicking on “standards.”)
Some of those athlete were or are competing in a single-sport in college and are now post-college or transferring. There will also be some non-traditional high school recruits who are looking for a different kind of environment. Or some post-college triathletes who want a squad to continue their development with.
Only six of the AUXO athletes will be fully funded — and the decisions on who gets funding will be made by the USAT High-Performance team. Primarily, Zaferes said, because she wants to treat all the athletes on the squad (funded or not) equally. The majority of that funding is likely to go to female athletes, given the focus on filling that post-college women’s gap.
There’s also some flexibility for athletes who are currently in school as Talent ID athletes — ie. they might be competing in a single sport right now but are on the USAT radar — to join for extended periods in the summer or on breaks.
So far, Katie said, the applications they’ve been getting are “a little bit of everything.” Single sport athletes, long-course triathletes who are younger and want to move to draft-legal, even athletes from totally different sports.
Applications close Dec. 1 if you want to be considered in the first cohort. And athletes should expect to move out to North Carolina by Feb. 1.
Who is running the group?
Katie Zaferes will be the head coach and she’ll be adding an assistant coach. She’s also planning on having her husband, Tommy, who currently runs the talent ID program and spent over a decade training with her, to be with the athletes in the field frequently — riding with them to show them skills or techniques, for example. She also plans on recruiting other resources, current and former pros nearby, to work with the athletes on things like finances, sponsorship, creating the right pro athlete environment for yourself day-to-day.
Since this is her first major coaching gig, “I do have a bit of imposter syndrome,” she said.
However, she is getting advice from her long-time coach Joel Friel, she spent over a decade training under him (considered one of the top triathlon coaches in the world), she studied physical education in college, and she feels like her personality characteristics lend themselves to being a coach.
Where are they based?
While the funding is tied to the U.S. Performance Center in Charlotte, the athletes will live and train in Cary, North Carolina about two hours away — which, Katie says, has a home base of professional runners, great trails and weather, and lots of resources for day-in/day-out training. They’ll travel to Charlotte at least once quarterly for testing, sports med, nutrition coaching, meeting with strength and conditioning experts, and sports psychology.
Does this compete with NCAA efforts?
“I feel like it’s really different,” she said.
Because the college experience won’t be the focus of AUXO, it certainly isn’t for someone who really wants to race with a team in the same uniform at nationals, and focus on their college career. There are some athletes who might opt for a non-traditional college experience, like is being offered with AUXO, but mostly it’ll be athletes coming over post-college or from single sports.
And, said Katie, she’s not reaching out to any NCAA athletes or recruits.
What will be considered a success?
That’s hard to pin down right now — with no athletes yet signed and plans still very much in the works.
In this first year, Katie said, the simple goal is to get the group defined and see progress in the athletes. She wants to see them improving, moving up in races from just getting their feet wet in triathlon to Continental Cups to World Cups, or improving results at the World Tri level.
The expectation is that athletes from AUXO will eventually move on to another coach or program when they’re ready, though there is no set timeline for that right now.
Of course, ultimately, the goal is to be creating a pipeline to U.S. Olympic medals. But that takes a lot of time to develop. (And, Kelly note: It almost definitely won’t happen by LA28.) So right now the goal is simply to get some pieces in place to start bringing promising athletes along the road towards that end result.