For the past 20-plus years - the last six of which were at Newtown High School - Zach Gauvin has been in or around a pool, involved with competitive swimming as a team member and later a coach. Things will change beginning this school year as Gauvin, who guided both the girls' and boys' squads at Newtown High every fall and winter, respectively, is moving on to try to make a splash in a new career.Boston Globe All Star accolades in his senior year. He scored points for the Southern Connecticut State University squad during the conference championships - where he swam the breaststroke, individual medley, and sprint freestyle events - then helped the Newtown High teams achieve success.

Gauvin, who lives in Naugatuck, will attend the University of Connecticut's Hartford campus to study financial risk management with the objective of being a financial planner.

"This will be the first September in which I'm not at a pool deck since I was 8 years old," said Gauvin, 30, who was a standout high school swimmer and went on to compete in college before taking on coaching duties. "Swimming, as an athlete and a coach, has been a huge part of my life."

Gauvin, who went to high school in Massachusetts, was second in the state in the breaststroke race and earned

The Nighthawks have been regularly among the most competitive teams in the South-West Conference, and Gauvin coached swimmers who broke dozens of team records, several pool records, and close to a dozen All State honorees, plus an All American in diver Kari Djonne. The girls were runner-up in the conference twice.

"We were always up there on a consistent basis," said Gauvin, who amassed nearly 100 career coaching wins.

A couple of factors led to Gauvin's decision to hang it up and dive into something different. One is that he got married (his wife is Anna) a year ago, and "I realized it would give me and my family the best opportunity in life," Gauvin said of making the career change. The other is something he learned while working as a flex teacher at Newtown High, helping out in an economics class.

Gauvin said he was assisting and competing against students in an online teaching game in which they did mock investments to learn how the stock market works when the idea of a different career began to take shape.

"That's when it sparked my interest," said Gauvin, adding that while this puts him out of his comfort zone, he's excited to take on a new challenge.

To make ends meet during his two-year program, Gauvin will continue his work as a job coach with Transitional Employment Unlimited, a job he held on a part-time basis, which he will do full-time now.

Gauvin's will be succeeded by Rebecca Osborne, with Melissa Carroll serving as diving coach. Gauvin says he wishes the coaching staff luck and plans to help with the transition to a new leaders of the school's teams.

Gauvin won't rule out the possibility of coaching again, but said continuing now wouldn't be fair to the student-athletes given the commitment necessary to guiding them throughout the season. Gauvin may be through with coaching for now, but he plans to be back at the pool at some point soon; he looks forward to returning to NHS to see how his former swimmers are doing.

"Coaching was one of the more valuable experiences in my entire life," he said. "I'm definitely going to miss the kids."