USA Swimming has announced their full coaching staff for the 2012 Olympics in London, England. There aren’t many surprises here, though sometimes there’s some slicing-and-dicing going on when deciding who is a women’s assistant and who is a men’s assistant.
Dave Salo, with five American Olympians to his name (Soni, Berens, Shanteau, Hardy and open water swimmer Anderson, though she works a lot with assistant Catherine Vogt), earned a spot on the women’s staff, along with Missy Franklin’s coach Todd Schmitz and Steve Bultman, who we discussed at length earlier.
The men’s staff will include David Marsh on his third American staff, and first since 2000. He is sending 5 swimmers to the meet, punctuated by Kara Lynn Joyce on the final day of the meet. He’ll also take Nick Thoman, Davis Tarwater, Cullen Jones, and Micah Lawrence. In a very short time, he’s turned around the careers of many of those swimmers, and includes a resurgent Cullen Jones that won the men’s 50 freestyle (the only of the 5 to win an event).
Eddie Reese will join Marsh on that staff, in a redux of a huge rival they had while Marsh was at Auburn and Reese was in his current position at Texas. Reese’s squad didn’t have quite the level of unbelievable achievement that he’s maybe used to at this meet, but he did put three on the team in Jimmy Feigen, Brendan Hansen, and what is believed to be his first female Olympian Kathleen Hersey.
Bob Bowman will go as the coach of Michael Phelps, but he also trains one of the leading medal-contenders on the women’s side in Allison Schmitt.
Jon Urbanchek, Tyler Clary’s coach at FAST in Fullerton, will go as a “special assistant,” and SMU associate men’s head coach Andy Kershaw will be the head manager. Kershaw will be assisted by Jeri Mashburn from Irvine NOVAquatics, who is on the LSC board in Southern California.
Shannon Gillespy, a former member of the USA Swimming Board of Directors, will assist Tim Murphy who is Alex Meyer’s head open water coach.
Teri McKeever, Cal – head women’s coach
Gregg Troy, Florida – head men’s coach
Tim Murphy, Harvard – open water head coach
Dave Salo, USC – assistant women’s coach
Todd Schmitz, Colorado Stars – assistant women’s coach
Steve Bultman, Texas A&M – assistant women’s coach
Bob Bowman, NBAC – assistant men’s coach
David Marsh, SwimMAC – assistant men’s coach
Eddie Reese, Texas – assistant men’s coach
Jon Urbanchek, FAST – special assistant
Andy Kershaw – head manager
Jeri Mashburn – assistant manager
Shannon Gilespy – OW manager
Durden should have been picked over Urbanchek.
Not sure instead of but I would think he would have gone too, he is a great young coach.
Urb is a terrific choice for a lot of reasons, he is knowledgeable, knows everyone and every swimmer, is a steady influence for coaches and athletes alike and is a legend for good reason.
I think Dave’s ethics would allow him to do the right thing and he wouldn’t even consider that scenario- Team USA takes priority over his club athletes medal chances.
When he accepted the invitation to become a member of this Team, all club loyalties take second priority. He would never gamble his integrity.
Agreed
Just a purely hypothetical scenario of course 😉
Say in the course of training camp Salo learns something about the way Breeja Larson is swimming from either observations/involvement or from conversations w/Bultman, do you think he would consider using this knowledge to help Efimova? Or using inside info that could impart an advantage to Hosszu over Beisel?
Understood Salo should of course help his own squad to achieve their best results at the highest level of the sport, but if it may make the difference for, say, Efimova edging out Larson for a medal or medal colour, wouldn’t that represent a bit of a conflict of interest…
Jack Bauerle?
That’s sort of like an all-star list of coaches as well. Maybe the only coach missing would be Schubert. With Busch being head of USA swimming now, I can’t think of or remember a better cast of coaches for our team! Go USA!!!
I see what you did there! Schubert, that’s funny. The recently released NT director on the NT staff. I agree with others, Durden or Baurle would add to this already great staff. All the names here are well deserved and chances are (haven’t looked it up yet) Durden is going on another countries staff. He will be at the games, I imagine.
Urbanchek also has Mclean
Salo also has a boatload of foreign swimmers from Trojan Swim Club / USC that will be competing, including female contenders like Hosszu and male contenders like Mellouli. Wonder how he’ll balance it out…
Salo has Hardy as well.