Competitor Coach of the Month: Gregg Troy

Competitor Coach of the Month is a recurring SwimSwam feature shedding light on a U.S.-based coach who has risen above the competition. As with any item of recognition, Competitor Coach of the Month is a subjective exercise meant to highlight one coach whose work holds noteworthy context – perhaps a coach who was clearly in the limelight, or one whose work fell through the cracks a bit more among other stories. If your favorite coach wasn’t selected, feel free to respectfully recognize them in our comment section.

Less than two months after his retirement, Gregg Troy is winning coaching accolades again.

To be fair, our Coach of the Month recognition isn’t exactly a career goal for most coaches. (Though the debate over the winner sometimes suggests that at least a few readers assume coaches are printing these articles, framing them and putting them up in a trophy case somewhere). But Troy’s group of professional swimmers performed very well in the month of June, with Troy stepping back from the college realm but continuing with Florida’s professional group.

The big showing was the Mel Zajac International meet in Canada.

Troy got 33-year-old Ryan Lochte back into international contention with two stellar comeback swims. Lochte was 4:15.80 in the 400 IM (which we noted puts Lochte far ahead of history at his age) and 1:58.90 in the 200 IM, both ranking 2nd among Americans this season. Lochte also had a handful of other solid in-season swims: 53.7 in the 100 fly, 54.7 in the 100 back and 50.7 in the 100 free, all crammed into just three days.

Of course, you can’t ignore Caeleb Dressel, who was 1:48.7 in the 200 free, 23.6 in the 50 fly, 22.1 in the 50 free, 52.4 in the 100 fly, 49.5 in the 100 free and 27.8 in the 50 breast at the Zajac meet. Dressel would return less than a week later to put up even better swims at the Pro Swim Series in Santa Clara: 48.9 in the 100 free, 52.2 in the 100 fly and 23.5 in the 50 fly.

And the other big name to surge under Troy this month was Penny Oleksiak, the Canadian Olympic champ who is training with the Gator pro group for the time being. Oleksiak won the 50 fly (26.5), 100 fly (59.12), 200 fly (2:09.96) and 100 free (54.50) at Mel Zajac, putting up the latter two swims back-to-back. She was also 25.8 in the 50 free. She then raced 11 times in Santa Clara, highlighted by a 26.16 win in the 50 fly.

A few other standout swims for Florida swimmers at the Mel Zajac meet:

• Clark Beach was 1:58.5 in the 200 back and 55.6 in the 100 back – he’s currently on the college team, but spent the past year training under Troy
• Gators went 1-2-3 in the men’s 200 free, with Dressel followed by Maxime Rooney (same situation as Beach) in 1:49.8 and pro Mitch D’Arrigo in 1:50.3. Rooney was also 53.6 in fly and 50.1 in free and D’Arrigo 3:51.9 in free.
• Gator Kelly Fertel was 4:44.4 in winning the 400 IM
• Ben Lawless won the 1500 free in 15:29.75

About Competitor Swim

Since 1960, Competitor Swim® has been the leader in the production of racing lanes and other swim products for competitions around the world. Competitor lane lines have been used in countless NCAA Championships, as well as 10 of the past 13 Olympic Games. Molded and assembled using U.S. – made components, Competitor lane lines are durable, easy to set up and are sold through distributors and dealers worldwide.

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