Bruce Clifton is a World History teacher at Yukon High School. He is also a swim coach for the YHS swim team. Clifton got his bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from the University of Central Oklahoma in 1999, and got his masters degree in sports administration in 2011 from East Central University. He has been coaching swim since 2008.

“The history part is like reading a book, it’s like a story,” Clifton said. “To me there is a number of ways you could interpret it, it’s like putting all the puzzle pieces together.”

Clifton has extensive years of teaching in his teaching career. Clifton has worked in numerous school districts for roughly 20 years.

“Last year was strange in the fact that students didn’t really interact with each other or the teachers,” Clifton said

COVID-19 caused a lot of quarantines, and students spent a lot of time on zooms doing distance learning. Clifton has been working to help his students open back up to each other.

“Surprisingly I think they’re already opening up or moving towards it, it’s not as difficult as I thought it would be,” Clifton said.

Clifton focuses on balancing his teaching career as well as coaching the swim team.

“I’m not a swimmer. I grew up a baseball player so the hardest part was really just figuring it all out at the beginning,” Clifton said. “I had to learn the whole swim world.”

Clifton expressed that the swim team was very fortunate and did not have very many quarantines on their team, and they did not have to make many changes. Clifton has coached for multiple different teams during his career.

“I was sitting in the dugout coaching baseball as the assistant coach,” Clifton said “The director said that he was going to start a swim team and I mentioned that I have a daughter that swims and the director decided I would be the new head swim coach.”