The past week has been tumultuous for the LSU Tigers, who have just begun their first season under new head coach Rick Bishop. A longtime associate head coach at Michigan, Bishop was named as the new head coach for LSU in late June of this year. At the end of last week, news dropped that associate head coach Steve Mellor was resigning from his position, effective immediately. Mellor had been serving in the role continuously since 2015, and cited prioritizing his “integrity and personal mental health” as the drivers for his decision.
In the days since Mellor left the program, junior Summer Stanfield has entered the transfer portal, indicating her intention to leave the program. Stanfield was one of the Tigers’ top women’s swimmers last year, earning a B finals appearance in the 200 back at SECs, and qualifying for NCAAs.
Here are Stanfield’s personal bests:
- 50 free – 23.80
- 100 free – 50.33
- 200 free – 1:47.26
- 500 free – 4:48.21
- 100 back – 54.62
- 200 back – 1:55.05
- 100 fly – 54.71
- 200 fly – 1:58.60
- 200 IM – 1:58.93
Stanfield is a versatile swimmer, who has been at her best in the 200s to this point in her career. Her 1:55.05 best time in the 200 back was swum at this past year’s SEC Championships, earning her a 12th-place finish. Her low 50-point 100 free and 1:47 200 free also give her relay value at many programs around the country. She split 1:46.06 on the 2nd leg of the 800 free relay at SECs last year, and 49.36 anchoring the 400 free relay.
Stanfield holds a number of all-time rankings for LSU, including #3 all-time in the 200 back. She’s also the #8 Tiger all-time on the 200 free, and #9 all-time in the 200 IM.
Stanfield competed in LSU’s intrasquad meet on September 25th, although that meet was just an exhibition. LSU has it’s first official meet this Saturday (10/9), when they’ll be hosting Grand Canyon. We don’t yet know whether Stanfield intends to leave the program immediately, or if she’ll be staying in Baton Rouge through the end of this season, then transferring to her new school. Whether or not Stanfield competes in the meet this weekend will be telling as to what her plans are.
A fair amount of negativity re: Rick Bishop
Anyone care to explain?
Any chance Mellor headed to Notre Dame?
You kind of have to wonder what is going on in Curry’s mind……
Tremendous human being from an amazing family that will benefit the culture of any program out there
New coach. Change of program and coaching style. Happens every time. Let the dust settle and everything will be fine. Actually hearing good things coming out of LSU. Wishing Summer the best!
Someone come get their man
Wrong, some coaches should stay assistant coaches. They can’t handle the self pressure of being a Head Coach.
Is it possible to retweet comments on swimswam cause this ^^
While I don’t think you’re wrong, he did specifically keep Steve on for a reason. The timing of this is a little bit of smoke. No fire yet, but definitely some smoke.
TBH, he lost two of his best recruiting assets to LSU: an NCAA qualifier (they don’t have many) and Brooks Curry’s coach. So, not it’s on him to build a program on his own reputation. That ramps up the pressure. Can he recruit to LSU? Not the way he did to Michigan, not immediately anyway.
If he can get Maggie to transfer next season, or get Siobhan or another one of his Michigan Olympians to come train there, that would help for sure.
That’s surely not going help the athletes already there as that will further draw his attention away from them.
It begins
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