Johns Hopkins Head Coach George Kennedy is being recognized as one of the World’s 50 Greatest Leaders by Fortune Magazine on the CNN Money website. Kennedy is being honored as someone “who will inspire you — some famous, others little known, all of them energizing their followers and making the world better.”
Fortune Magazine’s Geoff Colvin, the Senior Editor-At-Large, credited Kennedy with winning 23 conference titles and 17 top 5 finishes at the NCAA Championships as a team, not including Johns Hopkins’ performance at the NCAA Championships this past weekend.
This past weekend the Johns Hopkins women’s team earned their highest finish at the Division 3 NCAA Championships in Indianapolis, IN, winning every relay. In addition to their fantastic third place finish, swimmer Ana Bogdanovski was named the Swimmer of the Meet and Coach Kennedy was named the 2014 Coach of the Year by the CSCAA.
Coach Kennedy was named the World’s 36th Greatest Leader. Also making the list was TIME Magazines Person of the Year Pope Francis, former President Bill Clinton, the leader of the European Union Angela Merkel, the CEO of Ford Alan Mullaly, the Dalai Lama, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, Angelina Jolie, and many others. Mike Krzyzewski (Duke Men’s Basketball Coach), Gregg Popovich (San Antoni Spurs Coach), and Dawn Staley (South Carolina Women’s Basketball Coach) were the only other coaches that made the list, all tying at 20th.
I am very close to George and know the facts
1) George was recommended by the Editor in Chief. He does not know this man, nor does he know anyone at Fortune Magazine. This is not an “inside job”
2) this past NCAA meet was his 63rd championship. He has coached Men and women for the past 34 years and his teams have never failed to qualify
3) As President of the College Coaches of America he helped to turn that organization around; hand picked the past two presidents; and brought Joel Shinofield (current Executive Director) onto the board.
4) He is a leader on his campus and among his very good friends at JHU is… Read more »
How is any of this above hundreds of other individuals?
Eddie Reese has coached dozens of Olympians, how many has GK….none.
Eddie is regarded as one of the best coaches in the history of the sport and in turn one of the most profound leaders, GK is not.
Eddie has national championships, GK does not,
How many national or Olympic teams has GK been on…none.
Bottom line he has basically zero swimming accomplishments and really no major contributions to the sport, but hey I guess he is a good guy so he should be nominated then right….come on….
Kelly Currin Davies might have a different perspective of Eddie Reese’s leadership in the face of REAL adversity. No, not the kind of adversity where one of Eddie’s swimmers broke the jaw of another one of his swimmers and Eddie let the offending puncher return from suspension before the injured. That’s just idiots being idiots.
No, I mean the kind of adversity where she claims to have told Eddie Reese about Rick Curl, and was ignored.
Don’t confuse personal relationships with someone and being a good swim coach with TRUE leadership. Leadership only counts when the decisions are really hard to make, and from what I see, that leadership has fallen short in Austin more than once.
I don’t know… Read more »
Then where is Eddie Reese? That man does not have a single bitter or bad bone in his body. Would do anything and everything to help his swimmers and is regarded as one of if not the best coach in the history of the sport, not to mention everything he as done for the sport in terms of athletes and progression.
Those of you dogging this decision ought to watch the McKeever interview..
Can’t imagine it’s easy to win 1 NCAA title, regardless of division. How many successful or coaches who have made a profound impact haven’t won one? 17 top 5 finishes is pretty impressive to me. We also don’t get any detail about anything else he has done. Stats are the short way to go about it, I can only imagine there is more to it. Otherwise, we’d see a different swim coach on here.
The “World’s Greatest Coach” award that my summer league team gave me back in the ’90s just lost a little bit of its luster.
I could not be more proud of my old coach George! George remains one of the most influential and important individuals in my life! Anyone who knows him is not surprised by this great honor!
What? How has anyone outside of division 3 swimming ever even heard of George Kennedy? He hasn’t ever even won a team NCAA title let alone made an impact on any of the Division I elite level swimmers. I can think of multiple division 3 coaches who have more honors and achievements. Sounds like somebody on the inside wanted to honor a close friend.
Not to take away from George. I’ve always heard he’s a great person and he is extremely respectful on deck, but a division 3 swim coach getting this honor seems a little absurd.
I am sorry for your sake that you don’t know George, but if you did I am sure you would understand.
An anecdote: when I started coaching I was a effectively a volunteer at Penn. I earned 150 every two weeks. I met George at the Kenyon invite. He was president of the CSCAA at the time and asked me if I was going to convention. I told him no- I was leaving Penn and looking for a full time job, and so I couldn’t afford the plane trip and the hotel. George insisted I stay with him! Later when he turned me down as an assistant coach, he made time to meet with me during homecoming and gave me… Read more »
Um, why?