Earlier today, USA Swimming released the names of the 111 athletes who made the 2019-2019 USA National Team, and with that announcement also comes the names of those athletes’ coaches.
Essentially, the head coach of each national team member’s club makes the cut, and the head coach can also nominate the athlete’s primary coach, if it’s someone different. For example from this year, both Louisville head coach Arthur Albiero and assistant Vlad Polyakov are listed with Zach Harting as their athlete. Here’s last year’s description of the criteria, which should not have changed substantially.
This year, we counted 83 different individuals who were named as National Team coaches. You can view the full coaching roster here.
Here are a few of the things that stuck out to us:
- Cal men’s head coach Dave Durden has the most athletes on the national team, with ten current or former Cal swimmers making the cut.
- The seven swimmers who train with the University of Texas/Longhorn Aquatics are listed under both head coach Eddie Reese and assistant coach Wyatt Collins. It’s the same for the six female swimmers under Stanford head coach Greg Meehan and assistant Tracy Slusser.
- Seven swimmers fall under Indiana head coach Ray Looze. Six of those swimmers also listed under assistant Mike Westphal, while Coley Stickels is listed as the coach of record for postgrad Margo Geer.
- Of the 83 coaches on the National Team list, we counted 74 men and 9 women.
The national team coaching list is primarily about recognition, although coaches of athletes who win medals in each year’s “Operation Gold” meet (this year, it was Pan Pacs), are eligible for monetary incentives as well. You can read more about those here.
Hi All
My daughter is 13 y , she is playing freestyle 50-400 M and I want to improve its position
What is the gender breakdown of coaches?
WOOOOOO! Peter Andrew National Team coach!
Coach of the year! Ahhh I guess Durden did alright also
Considering MA ability he’s going to be on the national team
A) as long as MA swims
B) as long as he continues to be his sons primary coach
Hard to see MA not making national team on some event way into his thirty’s.
Probably retire when he’s done unless more swimmers move to usrpt with peter, which is unlikely.
Also noted:
applause going to Kredich and Baurele for not taking credit for athletes they don’t coach.
Yuri also getting scammed by not being on the National team.
Wow… I guess USA Swimming and ASU do not care that Bob Bowman sent inappropriate texts to a swimmer. Shame on USA Swimming (AGAIN) and shame on ASU. They had clearly not learned a thing from the METOO movement. It is about an abuse of power differential, not just sexual assault. Very happy for Allison Schmidt and I think Bob is probably a much better man today than he was in past, but we all have to be held to a standard that merits the value of our athletes.
Ah I see. I think you should be fired from your job and your kids taken from you if we are living by those rules…. Because there is no way in heck that you have gone your entire life without saying something inappropriate to someone of the opposite sex without written permission that you were allowed to do so before hand :D.
So, Allison should be left off the national team for something Bowman did several years ago?
no, allison should be on the national team and bowman should be left off because his past conduct demonstrates unwise judgement in how to act appropriately with national team athletes
You don’t seem to understand how this works. The athlete is named to the national team, and “with that announcement also comes the names of those athletes’ coaches.” Bowman and the 82 others aren’t being named as coaches of some team representing the U.S. in competition. He’s being acknowledged as having coached Allison Schmitt, who was named to the national team.
Kinda sad that Hawke doesn’t get any credit for Zapple considering he was there for what 4/5 of the year?
I think more than 4/5ths. He was only at Indiana for 5-6 weeks prior to Nationals.
Kinda sad that people don’t read the roster before posting comments
My bad— I saw Westphal and Looze getting credit for him and hadn’t heard of USA swimming adding a third coach.
He’s on the coaching national team…?