Hillary Swift, an Oxford native, is an assistant director of fitness at Miami University’s Rec Center. However, her impact on the Oxford community has extended well beyond the student base. Swift is the leader of the Silver Sneakers program, an insurance-based fitness program for people 65 years old and older, that offers a variety of class types for seniors in the area. She has cultivated a community of hard work and camaraderie among its members. Swift’s members have appreciated her efforts so much so that they nominated her for the 2026 Instructor of the Year Award, where she placed as runner-up from a pool of more than 800 nominees nationwide. While she said this came as a complete surprise to her, Swift stated that this just affirms the path she’d already chosen and hopes that the recognition will bring more light to what Silver Sneakers is and who it serves.

Swift started her fitness journey by getting her certification to teach yoga at the Rec Center. After graduating from Miami in 2015, she started working at a continuing care retirement facility, where one of the Silver Sneakers instructors at the time left, allowing her to step in. Though she was thrown into the fire, it helped Swift develop a passion for teaching the demographic and inspired her to get her Silver Sneakers certifications for Circuit, Yoga, and Classic style classes.

A typical Silver Sneakers circuit class begins before Swift even opens the door to the space. Members gather in the hallway outside, and as she describes, “I can already hear the laughter through the door.” Once inside, participants grab their weights, with Swift encouraging everyone to pull multiple sets so they can customize the intensity to their own body. The class is rhythm-based, moving to the beat of the music, and flows through a series of circuits. An example class might look like a cardio warmup, then a weighted circuit of lunges, squat curl presses, and lateral raises, followed by more cardio with grapevines and kicks, and then resistance band work for both upper and lower body. The class wraps up with core and balance work using an exercise ball before cooling down, where Swift lets members make song requests. Though chairs are set up for every class, most participants choose to stand, using the chairs instead to store equipment before taking their spot on the floor. Alongside these circuit classes, Swift also offers tabata, yoga, chair yoga, and water aerobics, all of which flow in a similar manner but target different fitness goals, abilities, and comfort levels within the program.

What Swift has built has gone far beyond a normal fitness class; it has become a community of kinship and collective hard work. “I think the biggest misconception is that people think this demographic doesn’t want to work hard, but they do, and they really push themselves during the classes.” Swift went on to emphasize how dedicated these individuals are to staying active and positively pushing each other. Part of what makes the Miami Rec setting uniquely suited for this is the intergenerational dynamic a university campus provides. Swift highlighted that when she has to be out of the office, student substitutes do a great job stepping in and running the classes. Beyond the classroom environment, Miami Rec specifically hosts a breakfast once a month for the Silver Sneaker’s crew, which once again helps reinforce the strong camaraderie amongst the community.

Swift plans to continue with her Silver Sneakers program, hosting 1-2 classes per day, but she does have ambitions for the future. She hopes that the recognition she receives from this nomination will raise awareness of what the Silver Sneakers program is and, in turn, draw more instructors, especially Miami students, to join her in instructing. Swift cannot emphasize enough how much the Silver Sneakers community here in Oxford means to her, and the feeling seems to be mutual. Perhaps nothing captures that bond better than the day her class rewrote the lyrics to The Beatles' “Yesterday,” turning a song she had previously told them before felt sad and melancholy, into a fitness anthem about getting stronger, and performed it during cooldown. “Yesterday, Silver Sneakers seemed so far away. Now I exercise almost every day. I’m much more fit than yesterday.”

Established in 1809, Miami University is located in Oxford, Ohio, with regional campuses in Hamilton and Middletown, a learning center in West Chester, and a European study center in Luxembourg.