The University of Missouri-St. Louis announced last fall it would be reinstating its men’s and women’s swimming programs to compete at the Great Lakes Valley Conference and Division II levels.
Now they’ve hired a coach, and you could say he has some familiarity with the team’s new playing field.
Tomas Kuzvard is the new head men’s and women’s coach for the program, bringing with him 9 NCAA Division II national championships and 21 All-America Awards.
Kuzvard competed for Division II powerhouse Drury College, also a member of the GLVC, as recently as 2009. The Czech Republic native was a national champion for his home country as well, and represented the Czech National Team in a host of international competitions.
He served as a graduate assistant at Drury after he wrapped up his college swimming career, helping Drury to NCAA titles in all three seasons he was there in that capacity (2010, 2011, 2012). He spent last year as an assistant coach at Ohio Northern before returning to Missouri to take over the newly-reinstated UMSL program.
My husband and I are UMSL swimmer alum and graduates – we are absolutely thrilled to see this program revived! We had some incredible swimmers over the years and look forward to seeing the new program thrive. We support the coaching choice and wish him much success!
Tomas is a CLASS ACT, and a great person at that. I enjoyed working with Tomas earlier in my career, and I know he will be a great hire for Missouri St Louis.
Apologies for my lack of embedding skills…..
But here is Tomas and the best prediction ever…….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDFkYCgfxrc
Tomas is on fiiiiirrrre !!! 😉
Great hire! Kuzvard will do well at St. Louis.
Best coach ever!!