Coach Karli's experience in triathlon began after taking a three-year break from competitive swimming while attending Columbia College Chicago. Realizing that she missed competing and ready for a new challenge Karli decided to train for her first sprint triathlon, the Naperville Women's Triathlon in 2008. "It was an amazing experience to cross the finish line! I'd never been a strong runner before and I had negative split all my miles and came in faster than any of my training runs. I thought, even after all that.'" Karli came back better and stronger the next year and completed the 2009 HRMS Sprint Triathlon. This summer, she is taking on the new challenge of an Olympic Distance Triathlon and AquaBike.

Karli's competitive swimming experience includes swimming in high school and college and most recently on a master's team while teaching English in Almería, Spain for the last 8 months. At the Winter Open Master's Championships of Andalusia Karli won five age group medals for her team, including gold in 100m Butterfly and silver medals in both 800m Freestyle and 200m Butterfly. Bahia went on to win the championship. Karli also won bronze in 200m Butterfly at the Winter Open Master's Championship of Spain and contributed place points to the Bahia del Almeria, which placed 9^th out of 126 teams.

Aside from personal success in swimming and triathlon, Coach Karli has had the joy of helping others to reach their goals throughout her seven years of swim instruction and coaching while working for Life Time Fitness. During that time, she has coached both the Master's Swim team and the children's Warrenville Warriors team and specialized in private training both beginner and intermediate level tri-athletes and competitive swimmers. Her areas of specialty include stroke assessment, technique training and athlete specific swim-endurance training. Karli is currently in the process of completing her USA Swimming Certification.

Karli graduated from Columbia College Chicago with a B.A. in Creative Writing and has a Teacher's Certification from the TEFL Institute. Coach Karli uses her story telling skills and creativity to help her students visualize and understand technical skills and gain a better sense of body awareness. She enjoys helping all levels of athletes achieve their goals.

"The most rewarding part of my day is seeing the look of surprise and satisfaction on my clients' face when they reach their goals-whether overcoming their fear of the water, swimming a full lap for the first time, completing their first triathlon or improving on their times. No goal is too small or too big."