"Lara is a pathological liar. She will say something completely false to your face and manipulate you into believing it, or manipulate you into doing something that will benefit her, regardless of the consequences towards you. You cannot trust Lara, if you believe you are having a sensitive and vulnerable moment with her, she will turn around and use that information against you on the flip of a coin. She also doesn’t do any recruiting or set writing, and when it comes to her coaching she sits on the pool deck on her phone and lets the lesser paid assistant coach do her job for her. Her coaching comes down to her saying the same two things, tempo and kick, regardless of what the reality of the actual solution is. FAU will be better when she is gone. "

"Terrible. Screams at players. Calls them losers. Has no technical plan. Changes 70% of the team annually and all from Europe. Brings in terrible players. Encourages players to change majors to easy subjects like Physical Education so they can focus on soccer. "

"Not all retired Olympic athletes make good coaches. And for someone to be on a power trip the way she is at FAU you’d think she was THE Olympic athlete but only competed in a relay that didn’t medal. She cared more about the way she looked than what we were actually putting into the pool. Had absolutely no structure to her practices. Basically tacked on yardage just to say it was a good practice. No level of technique training was ever put into place. No workouts were structured or had any goal to them. A coach is supposed to help towards individual goals along side team goals and the only “goal” that mattered was hers and whatever image she was trying to achieve. Hated swimming for someone like that. She made me hate the sport… I understand girl power and being a female in a strong position like hers, but she was more concerned with maintaining her power position than anything else. "

"Coach Smolka comes off very nice and pleasant but creates an extremely toxic team environment. He cares little to none for athletes that are not a top runner on the team. He also makes everything essentially mandatory despite saying “You don’t have to go”, if you don’t attend you are berated about why you didn’t attend. Many past athletes that I spoke with either hated the sport after or couldn’t wait to leave the school. Although he does a good job scheduling meets and travel, running is first and school/community engagement is much farther down the list of priorities. If you love running and wouldn’t be swayed by a team culture that is toxic because the coach LOVES gossip then this team will be fine. You’ll be better off going to a different school with a coach that wants you to be a successful person after school than a coach who won’t help you progress into a career. "

"Coach Lara is a former FAU swimmer which is cool, the downside is that she doesn’t have any experience outside of FAU which hinders her ability to try progressive practices or techniques. "

"I did not have a positive experience with Coach Lara. "