Annette McDonald is a teacher and swim coach at Free State High School. She worked with her girls squad during a recent practice.

Annette McDonald can sometimes be seen chatting up the rival coach at high school swim meets.

It’s OK. McDonald, the Free State High School swimming and diving coach, is married to Kent McDonald, the swimming and diving coach at Lawrence High School.

They often sit together on the bus en route to competitions and talk to each other around the pool.

“We respect each other’s professional boundaries and celebrate each other’s victories,” Annette McDonald explains.

McDonald, 52, has been teaching, coaching swimming and volunteering for nearly 40 years. She has no plans to slow down. She teaches mathematics at FSHS, coaches master swimmers and teaches water safety, lifeguard instructors’ and CPR classes for Douglas County’s Red Cross.

“Teaching and serving are in my blood,” McDonald says simply. “It’s something I learned from my parents.”

Her father, Stuart Fourroux, owned and operated Stuart School in New Orleans. She enjoyed playing school with her three sisters, helping her parents around their school and helping other kids in her class.

“I discovered early on that everyone learns things in different ways,” she recalls.

She loves being around water. She was a summer camp swimming aide at 13, received the Red Cross Southeast Louisiana chapter’s Junior Volunteer award at 15 and became a board certified water safety instructor at 16.

After graduating from Stuart school in 1974, she attended Louisiana State University, swam for the college team, graduated with a B.S. in education in 1978 and joined her dad’s staff as librarian and math teacher.

She married Kent, a Lawrence native, in 1979 and took a break from teaching to have her three children. But she continued to volunteer.

“Volunteering was like a full-time job, so Kent suggested I return to teaching and get paid for it,” she says, laughing.

She taught mathematics at Archbishop Rummel all-boys Catholic high school in Metairie, La., and became the school’s first female swimming coach.

When Kent, who still holds the Kansas University steeplechase and Lawrence High 2-mile record, sustained a leg injury, they both joined a masters’ swim team to help with his rehabilitation therapy.

“We shared the same concepts and philosophy for training athletes and swimmers, so we started training together and entering triathlons,” she says. “We enjoyed competing and doing it together.”

When they moved to Lawrence in 1989, she taught at LHS and moved to Free State when it opened in 1998.

A year later, when Kent became the Lawrence masters swim coach, she became his assistant so he could swim twice weekly.

“Now I primarily coach the masters,” she says. “I’m at the pool four mornings a week from 5:30 to 7:30.”

In addition to coaching and teaching duties, she still finds time for Red Cross work.

“I love teaching and enjoy helping students and swimmers set their goals. Seeing swimmers tweak their techniques, become faster and leave the water feeling good about what they’ve just accomplished is very satisfying and rewarding,” she says.