Notre Dame Swimming Adds Duke’s Josh Stanfield to New-Look Coaching Staff

Notre Dame’s new head swimming & diving coach Chris Lindauer has announced the latest addition to his coaching staff: Josh Stanfield. Stanfield comes to the program from Duke, where he served as an assistant coach for four seasons.

Stanfield is the third assistant added to the Notre Dame staff since Lindauer was named head coach on April 21. Of the three, Stanfield is the first to come from outside of the Louisville family: the two associate coaches hired earlier this month are both former Louisville swimmers: Olympic gold medalist Kelsi Dahlia and four-time All-American Kameron Chastain. Chastain was also on the coaching staff at Louisville with Lindauer.

Stanfield’s hire does keep Notre Dame’s staff entirely from other ACC programs, however.

“Josh will immediately make an impact on our team culture at Notre Dame,” said Lindauer. “His passion and dedication to our student-athletes is his number one priority. Josh brings with him a proven track record in recruiting and developing high achieving academic student-athletes that will fit the Notre Dame standard. No matter where you are on pool deck, you will always hear Josh supporting our student-athletes with everything he has! Josh, Kristin, and Ruby…welcome to our Irish Family!  Go Irish!”

During his time in Durham, the Blue Devils tallied a number of individual and team-best performances. In his most recent season with Duke, the women’s squad matched its best finish at the ACC Championships, placing 5th overall. At NCAAs, the women’s team finished 24th.

Stanfield worked with Sarah Foley who earned All-ACC and All-American honors in 2021-22. He also coached the men to two new sprint freestyle relay records in both 200 (1:17.86) & 400 Freestyle relays (2:52.71). Both records that were broken were set three years prior.

During the pandemic-shortened season in 2019-20, 10 Blue Devils were set to compete at the NCAA Championships. Alyssa Marsh broke three school records during the season as the men’s and women’s teams reached the highest rankings had ever had in the CSCAA polls during the season: women were ranked 9th in the final CSCAA poll while the men were 15th during the November edition of the poll.

In his first year in Durham, Duke swimmers recorded 18 school record times, including in nine of the 10 relay events. Overall, Stanfield worked with nine CSCAA All-American honorees in his first season with the Blue Devils.

Prior to Duke, Stanfield spent six seasons at Gardner-Webb, including his last season as associate head coach.

Stanfield’s previous coaching experience includes time as a volunteer assistant coach at his alma mater, Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. Stanfield also held an age group coaching position at Texas-based Gold Medal club Nitro Swimming.

A native of Huntsville, Texas, Stanfield graduated from Southwestern in 2011 with a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology.

Notre Dame was without an official head coach for the 2021-2022 collegiate season after Mike Litzinger and associate head coach Aaron Bell resigned early in the season. The men and women both placed 33rd at the NCAA Championships, scoring five and six points, respectively.

At the 2022 ACCs, the Irish women finished 6th and men were 8th, having finished 5th and 7th, respectively, the season prior under Litzinger.