As part of its centennial celebration, the College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of American has released its collection of the 100 Greatest Coaches, which recognizes “the most successful and pioneering swimming and diving coaches.”
Among the list include American swimming staples like Texas coaches Eddie Reese and Carol Capitani, Georgia coach Jack Bauerle, Stanford Coach Greg Meehan, Cal coaches Dave Durden and Teri McKeever, and Indiana’s Ray Looze.
Selections were made based on their intercollegiate success, despite many coaches also having personal swimming success or success with non-college swimmers. Many of these coaches have independently won CSCAA coach of the year.
The list also features greats from across history, like Ron Ballatore, former UCLA, Brown, and Florida coach whose roster included 28 Olympians.
Hobie Billingsley is represented on the diving side – he coached Indiana diving from 1959 to 1989, and his divers won more than 100 national titles. Another IU legend, Doc Counsilman, is also on the list.
Only 14 of the 100 coaches are women.
Swimming as a whole has been reluctant to name women as top coaches, including as head coaches for Team USA. As of 2020, only two women lead men’s teams at Power 5 schools – Katie Robinson at Northwestern and Courtney Hart at Georgia Tech.
Also notably not included on the list is Bob Bowman, who currently coaches ASU and has previously coached Olympic greats like Michael Phelps, and Virginia head coach Todd DeSorbo, who recently led the UVA women to an NCAA title. He won the CSCAA Division I Women’s Team Coach of the Year. Most of Bowman’s successes have been at the international level, and he hasn’t coached college for most of his career.
“We are thrilled to honor these coaches – and ALL the coaches who make a positive impact on student-athletes everyday!” The CSCAA wrote. “Thank you for your service!”
Okay new rule: if you’re going to add a name, you also have to tell us who they’re replacing.
Replace Ray Looze with David Armbruster. Armbruster pioneered the dolphin kick and invented the butterfly. You can replace
+2 points for following the rules.
While I only immediately recognize about 20% of this list, I’d put Dino over both Richardson and Looze. He built Virginia’s program literally from the ground up, while both Looze and Richardson had significantly more history and funding to work with.
And look how easily he transitioned into other programs and now doing work at NCSU.
Uh….Sherm Chavoor?
Bangladesh swimming federation have need a good coach to training our national swimming team for 1year.
Bob Groseth
Hard to understand why college coaching is make or break.
They inherit high level swimmers.
The Great club coaches do the tough work.
Develop elite athletes.
Greater challenge/accomplishment IMHO.
Absolutely preposterous that Frank Comfort and Braeden Holloway are included and Mark Bernardino isn’t. Winningest coach in ACC history and Olympians in every games since like 1996.
Going back to one of the original posts: what’s the criteria? Every poster has different criteria in their head. Winningest, championships, innovative, fastest athletes, DI vs DII vs DIII, head Coach vs assistant Coach, diving vs swimming, male vs female, etc. A true rabbit hole that spawns great discussion and perspective.
My criteria goes back to a comment Steve Nye said to me when talking about a father son relationship related to one of our athletes. Steve said, “XXXX, do you want your son to come to your funeral?” “If so, you may want to quick treating him so poorly and start listening to him.”
My criteria is who would have the most people come to their funeral. IMO, a… Read more »
Proud to say I trained under Ernie Maglischo and Pete Hovland. They came from California to our AAU team The Oakland Live Y’ers up at Oakland U in Rochester Mi.. Wow that was probably 40yrs ago.
No Rick Kobe from ECU? All time record of 530-188-1, doesn’t get much better than that. Also number 4 all time in dual meet wins
Follow the rules. Who are you removing to put him on the list?
I don’t know every single swim coach on this list, but no one has to, to observe this: If you are 4th all time in dual meet wins, there are not 96 coaches that are more deserving of this recognition.
But even playing that game – here is who I am removing to put the 4th winningest coach in history in the top 100: Seth Houston
You’re removing a guy who is a 4-time CSCAA Coach of the Year, has coached swimmers to 8 NCAA Championship Meet Records, and coached a team to back-to-back NCAA Championships?
Gonna have to go with Holloway. Although what he has done NCSU has been great, it doesn’t correlate to having 500+ dual meet wins. How can you be 4th all time but not be in the top 100?
because dual meet wins don’t really prove anything? You could schedule the easiest teams every year. Holloway took a joke NC State team to a perennial contender. This isn’t anti Rich Kobe but I just don’t see why dual meet wins should really matter.
Given the way that college coaches treat dual meets, I struggle to take them too seriously as a metric of success.
Lest we forget: https://staging.swimswam.com/kenyon-women-exhibition-their-way-to-loss-against-michigan-state/