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All right, welcome to the SwimIntel Spotlight. I am Jamie Bailey. And today I am with coach

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Jeff Dugdale, director of swimming at Queens University of Charlotte. Coach Dugdale, thank

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you for taking the time to talk with me today. Thank you for having me, Jamie. I appreciate

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it. All right, let's start with a bit of background of the success that you've had at Queens.

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Queens is a division one team that swims in the Atlantic sun conference where you finished

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second last year at conference championships for both your men's and women's teams. This

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season will be your third season as a division one program. Prior to that, you won seven

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consecutive NCAA division two national championships as a team, which is simply remarkable. In

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14 years at Queens, you have racked up 14 NCAA team championships between your men's

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and women's teams, 124 individual NCAA championships and 735 NCAA all-American swims. The success

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you've had at the championship level speaks for itself. Here's my question. If I am a

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high school recruit looking to swim in college, why else should Queens be at the top of my

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list? That's a great question. I feel strongly because Queens is so unique in many ways that

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it's a smaller, intimate school in a big city, but right in the shadows of the big city,

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literally 1.5 miles away from uptown Charlotte, the 14th largest city, fourth fastest growing,

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which gives us a great living laboratory to gain valuable experience and move and matriculate

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into adulting nicely with good experiences. Usually, internships come with pay in this

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type of city in Charlotte. More importantly, we exist to build leaders for life. That's

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what we exist to do. We are a school that really embraces a one size fits one attitude.

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Each athlete, we really sit down and take time to understand who they are and what they

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need and you will have a role within our program. Having a role, although sometimes not the

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NCAA score, sometimes not the conference score, but if you play your role to the fullest,

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you will wear a ring and you will leave a legacy bigger than anything that you could

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do in swimming. Again, have learned something at a much higher level than you could if you

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just sat in a classroom or swim in a program of a ton of people and just been another number.

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Here you actually have a spot and have a place to impact others.

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Well your recruiting track record has been fantastic over the years. What are the absolute

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most important things you consider when deciding if you're going to recruit a particular student

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athlete to Queens?

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Yeah, the student athlete has to be able to articulate the why they want to come to Queens.

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That's what gives us a large yield rate in coming to Queens is the ability to say, I

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want this because and this using swimming and using the platform and knowing the history

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of Queens, I will be able to achieve this upon matriculation into adulting. And we help

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them by providing them quite the guideline. We have the vision of we exist to build leaders

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for life. We have the framework of the values to build upon the values they bring from the

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home and that's excellence as a lifestyle, not as an event, communicating early and often,

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character what you do when nobody's watching, service, urgency in the classroom and in the

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pool, teamwork and teamwork. And so those values then help them matriculate into being

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global minded, agile in their thinking, decisive in their decision making, honorably engaged,

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civically, civic minded and civically engaged and professionally adept. So when we give

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them that that continuum continuum or that that pathway to adulting that what happens

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is they usually have the aha moment to be able to tell me how they will follow that

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and be able to engage, leverage and ultimately take advantage of it. And those people thrive

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here, thrive. But it means that when somebody doesn't and this is I think what makes us

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different is I really work with our coaches to be okay with telling somebody no. And so

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what we're doing is we're trying to make sure that we're not telling somebody no is we don't

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we don't have to feel an urgency at any point to say yes just because they're a fast swimmer.

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In fact, we spend a lot of time teaching our student athletes that they are not to leave

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their legacy in times because at and no offense to others, but we will always recruit somebody

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if that's your legacy. You need to leave your legacy and leadership and moving the needle

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with your team. If you become better, you make your team better. I love that. That that is awesome.

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You know, although Queens is in Charlotte, North Carolina, less than 20% of your athletes come

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from the state of North Carolina. I believe it's for your women. It's around 10% for your men,

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around 20%. You recruit not only from all over the US, but you also recruit internationally.

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If an athlete wants to swim at Queens, what is the best way for them to get your attention?

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Yeah, that's to reach out and and tell us why. Give us the why and I'm always willing to

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listen. And believe me, you do not have to be the fastest swimmer. Although we are all about fast

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swimming, you do not have to be the fastest swimmer. If you're going to make an impact and

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leave a legacy in this program, I can give examples up and down of people who came and did not

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leave one point on the tape, did not score one point, but everybody remembers them here as to

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the impact they made. So it's an interesting statistic because I cert I truly believe in

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my heart that Charlotte is a destination. North Carolina is a destination for people to come to.

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The unfortunate thing is if you live in North Carolina, it's like cafeteria food, right? You

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can say it's a great cafeteria food, but if you have it every day, then it becomes monotonous.

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So I believe people in Charlotte want to find a destination somewhere else. And my example is

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always this. Where do people that live in Hawaii go to? Where do they move to? I mean,

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because everybody wants to go to Hawaii. Everybody wants to go, but then where do the people at Hawaii,

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where do they go to? So what happens is I feel like for these many, the greater percentage of

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people that come to Charlotte, it's because they truly see and can see the benefits of the 14th

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largest city, fourth fastest growing and all that it has to offer. Those who live here tend to take

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it for granted and want to go away, but then only to find it's important to get back. So that's an

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interesting statistic. And that's one of the things I love about Swim and Tell, I'll tell you right now,

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is I have this little saying that in God we trust all others bring numbers. And I love numbers.

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Numbers help me make decisions, more importantly, numbers and trends help me ask better questions.

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And that goes back to our recruiting is when I see a trend of going up or going down, I know that I

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can ask my questions look different to that person to figure out the story and get the context that I

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need to find out if they're going to be a good fit. Yeah. And I think, you know, I'm probably the

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biggest data nerd you'll talk to. So share that in common. Let's talk a little bit about videos. So

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college coaches we talked to, they're pretty split on whether or not racing videos are important

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when they're evaluating a potential recruit. You know, for you, how important are videos

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in the recruiting process, you need to see a swimmer swim before you're going to

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make that offer or invite them for a visit. So the answer is I split, I sit right on the fence.

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But I would say I tend if I were to look at a statistic, I'm at I'm over 50% and I don't need a

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video because the clock is the trailer of all truths. And so if the if a person's four foot nine,

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and they're the world record holder, I'm going to I'm going to accept that and be at ease with that.

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Now, if they're at 4.9 and how much more improvement I can get, it may may be a little bit

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different. But I if I even if I go and see somebody swim, I'm not always looking at how they swim

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either. I'm looking to see how they interact with their teammates and their family. And so

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family and their I'm looking for the intangibles because again, the clock says what it says.

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Now, in my questions and the answers to my questions of where they are with their when I

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talk to their coaches themselves and surrounding their support staff is I want to know more about

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strength, flexibility, I want to know about mitochondria DNA, about where their mom where

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they fit on the food chain where they what if they're the oldest child, if they're an only child,

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if they're the middle or the youngest, I want to know more about the environment they're

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surrounding that if this environment will be will help take them to the next level.

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Because I have a confidence in our strength and conditioning program. I have confidence in the

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culture of our program and what that looks like. And I have confidence in our ability to coach.

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Now, here's what in in college athletics, by the time they get to me, I'm making a grave error if

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I'm trying to change somebody's stroke completely, because that it's too late. What they're going to

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learn at up until the age of 12 to 15 is what they are, then we build strength around it and

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strategy around it and build speed around it. But from there, there's not much if I'm going to break

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somebody down, I will not have enough time in four years literally to completely change them for the

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most part. Yeah, makes complete sense. Let's talk about the athletic scholarship situation in Queens.

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Are you fully funded, partially funded? And you know, how do you decide how to allocate your

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scholarship money amongst all of your athletes? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And we, we,

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in division two, we were fully funded in division one, we are very close to fully, well,

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everything changed two weeks ago, right? We were very close to being fully funded in the men.

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And we were moving up the ladder in the women. But that takes time. We couldn't just do it. But we

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did make a nice move up towards getting to where we need to get to. But now it all that that word

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comes or that phrase comes in to different play because fully funded is 30 scholarships now.

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And there will probably be as I know right now, two schools, Tennessee, I think, and Texas, I'm

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guessing that have the money to do that. And, and, and the rest will find where that where the medium

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and this is where I think you're going to your company is going to play an amazing role in helping

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people find that law of diminishing return and what they really get. Right now we're we're the

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benefactors again in recruiting going back to the recruiting of getting calls just this morning at

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645. Hey, I have two stellar athletes that have lost their spots on a power four team. Do you have

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room for them in 2025? Now here's the good news in a mid major that we have our option and in the

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a son, our commissioner has decided that in doing his research, and again, this could change by

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noon time today, but in doing their research with through the presidents and athletic directors,

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that right now every school can do what they want. They can either opt in or opt out. And opting out

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means you just work a business as usual, you're going to work to the equivalency, and you're going

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to work to the however your school goes, but you can't go over 9.9 and men and 14 and women. If you

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opt in, you've got to opt in for all sports and you've got to do it. You're going to limit your

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rosters and swimming that is 30 and 30, unless the conference has decided differently, which we've

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seen recently with the SEC going to 22 on the men's side, 30 on the women's side. And they said

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because of Title IX and the amount of sport offerings. So there's a lot going there. So how

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I use my is we work because we're a very high academic school. Our women hold a 3.8 grade point

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average. We have, we're very blessed that we get our women coming in, get a lot of academic money,

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and then we usually, if we can, add some athletic, and then we build a team around somebody getting

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something academic or athletic. And then the same with the men we really build around. And then we

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look at AI in the offerings that you have to kind of say, can we predict through asking the right

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questions and through looking at the right data and trends, say, can we go ahead and bet where

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they'll end up in the future versus trying to do what other schools say is you've got to be here

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before I can give you here. Is we try to believe in them from the start because that's what we feel

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is the right way to go. And it's been a winning formula for us to this point. Yeah, you brought

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up the greenhouse settlement, the potential decreases in available roster spots at certain

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conferences and schools. Personally, Swimintel, we've had three student athletes that are 20-25s

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had their power four offers rescinded in the last three weeks. Yeah, and I would say that three is

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a representation of about her club. I mean, we're, it's pretty amazing. One recruiting week and all

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the friends all of a sudden the talk started changing because all their friends and they

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wanted to commit early real quick because they were seeing they were getting things saying,

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where are you? Do they have room for me as well? And these are really good swimmers.

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But if I may get on my soapbox here a little bit about the greenhouse settlement because

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Grant House, first of all, Grant House, I think it's and I say this, I say this with great care

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to say ignorance is not a bad word. It's just not knowing, but there's a lot of ignorance

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about the attacks on Grant House. Grant House is not going to bring down the NCAA. Grant House

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exposed what was already an underlying condition that was happening. And the NCAA owns all the

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responsibility for this because they were making decisions and trying to make decisions that were

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not fair or reflective of the student athletes thoughts and causing people to make decisions

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like the one and done and they different things having to go different routes in order to protect

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themselves. There's more to it and I'm probably not articulating it correctly. But what I say is

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what could bring down the NCAA is what is still left in what the NCAA does not learn from their

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mistakes, they and continue to go down a path will be whether athletes vote to become employees or

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not employees. That becomes a whole different ballgame. But collective bargaining is fair and

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fair and helping athletes decide what's best for them and allows them to finish an education in

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order to get to the next level and do some different things. And it just makes sense.

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But right now, am I happy about where all the power lies? No, because all the power right now

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lies in the student athlete and where that becomes dangerous is we're not doing them a favor

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and helping build them to be leaders. Because what happens now is as any child is, they become

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manipulative just based on what they know, and they know they have the whole power. So what that

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is doing to the NCAA and where grants getting a bad rap is that's causing the NCAA institutions

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to have to protect with what I call it, they're hoarding dollars. So a program if they need

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1.4 million, they're looking at a program that's swimming or 1.2 millions of swimming.

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And they're saying that's where I need to go if I need 1.2 million quickly. And I drop that program.

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But that's only because right now, we're only human if we make human mistakes.

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We cannot say sorry or go back and fix them. The student athlete has all the power to still

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collect and do everything they want. And until we get that balance of power back, and I joke with

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this halfway, that I think there should be two portals. One for the student athlete, one for

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the coaches. And that's how we get balance back is that the student athletes can go if they want,

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and the coaches can put people in if they want, if they're not fulfilling the business needs.

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And their obligations. And then all of a sudden, that will quickly balance everything. But until

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we find that balance, and I think it will come quickly, that we're going to see this big run on

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the portal, and we're going to see these potential sports being cut because people have to quickly

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find money. But when we get the balance, it will be easier to navigate and project where we're going

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in the future. And that's my thought only. It's an opinion of one, and it comes from this office only.

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We talked to a lot of coaches about just how everything's changing. And so many of the mid

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majors, D2s, D3s, the coaches are actually excited about an increase of talent flowing

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into their programs. Some of the Power Four coaches, a little bit more, let's just say uneasy

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about how it's changing. What's your view at Queens? How do you think you're going to benefit

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from these changes? We're absolutely, and we're probably, and I say most equipped, I don't want

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to say we have experience in Division Two. We pretty much brought a whole other level of talent

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in Division Two. And I mean, our vision was to, and I truly felt, there's no reason we shouldn't

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have athletes that can't compete in Division One level. And so it was amazing. And we saw that,

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yes, I believe there's going to be a home for everyone. But what's going to have to happen here

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is not necessarily at the collegiate level. I believe it has to happen at the club level,

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because a lot of times at the mid-major and at the Division Two level, what we saw and battled

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against was a club coach wanting, and I understand it, so I don't blame them, but it's very similar

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to high schools. They would rather see and tell and brag that they send 30% of their people to

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Harvard, Princeton, to the Ivy Leagues than to the other schools. And in club swimming,

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they would much rather say instead of, we produced athletes that accumulated a million dollars in

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scholarships, they rather say, we had 10 athletes go Division One and to the Power Four. And that

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seems to be a powerful thing. Sometimes we have to battle, hey, this is why we think it's right for

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this athlete to come here versus going to another big school. But it's obviously those coaches want

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their club teams to be able to say, hey, we send this many people to the Power Fours and to all

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the other areas. So if we can get club coaches to really buy into the right fit for the student

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athlete, I think we'll start to see parity and we'll start to see a lot of fast swimming all around.

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I 100% agree. All right. We talked about how you approach recruiting athletes. I would like

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to now talk about how you develop athletes. As you are well aware, Queens took the crown last

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year for the top overall improvement progression for women last season, averaging a 4.6% drop in

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best events from high school. You compare that 4.6% drop to the D1 female average of 1.4%

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and you absolutely break our scale. So let's look at some examples. Riley Haigh, she comes into

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Queen as a freshman with a 55 flat 100 free. Her junior year, she swims that 100 free at 50.18.

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That is an 8.8% drop from high school. Sophia Lang has a high school best, 503 of 458. She drops

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over 12 seconds by her junior year to a 446. Those are huge drops. What are you doing differently

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at Queens to have so much better development than the average D1 program?

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Yeah. So I think it comes to my mentor and David Marsh and working with him is we really thrive

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on identifying athletes who haven't that are a little bit newer to swimming and that most other

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people won't take a risk on. And we really, like Riley was a part-time year-round swimmer

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and full-time high school swimmer and was getting pushed to swim college, but didn't even think she

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was, she could handle college. And we had to really develop a plan for her and the one size fits one

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thing, how we would get her and navigate her without overwhelming her and burning her out. But

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she, we could see the talent in her. We could see the growth mindset. And that's again, through the

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questions we asked, through the relationship we built, we saw that she had a growth mindset. She

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was coachable. She talked not so much about swimming, but how she wanted to use swimming to become

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how it was going to help her career and what she wants to do. And that became very important for

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us. And we really were able to develop. And we had an athlete prior to her, Daniel Millili, who

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just went through the same type of improvements out of high school to make the Olympic trials.

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And she skipped everything, JOs, sectionals, all that to make Olympic trials as her first big meet.

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And one of the things she saw that we could do it, we've done it before, we could do it again. And

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sure enough, Riley, she's 22, mid to low in the 50 now too, and she's a captain in our program,

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and she is thriving. Sophie, it's funny you bring up her 500 because to me, the most impressive is

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her mile. I believe she almost dropped a minute in her mile. But Sophie was a fighter. Sophie,

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like because of her size, a lot of people didn't believe that they could take a risk on her at a

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bigger level. Sophie, I could see the potential for building some strength. And I saw an incredible

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range from the mile all the way down to the 100. She could swim on our relays and do some different

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things. She just had a mindset that was amazing. Now, Sophie is a mitochondria DNA recruit. So when

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I look at Sophie's mom, Sophie's mom was a swimmer coach, she had the pedigree, and she had the

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whereabouts and the intelligence to be able to be, again, a growth mindset. And so all we had to do

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was beat it to her and give her the platform to thrive on. And the more we gave her and challenged

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her with and the more she had fun with failure, and as we tried to push her further and she'd fail,

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but yet break through a new barrier, that she just kept getting faster and faster. If she could do

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another year with us, a fifth year, I have a feeling she would be even faster. But she's going

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on, I think, with the FBI now. So she was recruited by Secret Service, FBI, a lot of the agencies,

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but she's just got that mindset. That's awesome. So we talked about recruiting, we talked about

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development, but your retention has also been fantastic. You hit a 100% return rate on your

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freshmen women coming back for their sophomore year, multiple years in a row, and nearly 100%

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return for your freshmen men. I think you only had one of your freshmen guys not return for their

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sophomore season the last two years. What do you think are some of the main reasons you've had such

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good luck with retention? And do you think your success in developing time drops factors in at all

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here? Yes, I believe it does. But even those who the ones that you've talked about left didn't leave

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to another program. They left, they made a choice to go and do something that was better for them or

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something personal that happened. I think our yield rate comes from our recruiting. We ask the

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right questions. We can say no when we need to say no. And no isn't always a bad thing. The

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recruiting process is about finding the right place for both the athlete and the coach and the team.

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And sometimes, I'll give you an example, is we have a basic engineering program, but we're more

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liberal arts with pre-med and all that. But somebody who wants to be an engineer says,

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I'll change my major because I want to swim there. That's a no, because they are ingrained

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in their mindset. They will be bored. They will be unhappy here if they come. And so we then offer

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to help them find the right place. But recognizing what makes you strong as a program, and I think

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why we have such a good, as I started the program 15 years ago, and why we have such a good retention

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rate is because I know this program inside and out. And my assistant coaches know this program.

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Sometimes they get a little caught up and excited about how fast they are, and I have to jump in

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and say they're not a good fit. And it's not because they're not good people. It's just because

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this, we're not going to be able to give them what they need. When we do that, it really intrigues

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and brings in even more people. And what happens is I usually get a big thank you from the team

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when I see someone swimming well at another school saying, hey, thank you for your help because

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this is exactly where I needed to be. And I say, I agree and good for you. And that's why I think

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we have a good retention rate. Never stop recruiting them. That's one of the biggest things

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is even before this new change in NCAA landscape with the transfer portal, I've always been taught

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by Coach Marsh. That's how we won our first national championship was because we never stopped

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recruiting our current team. And we are always respectful to the people recruited who didn't

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come. And when UCLA dropped their program and Nick Shackle came and I mean, we had so many good

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Andrews, Michael Andrews, Todd Kanagiser came and Randy Hartley came from UCLA to Auburn. That helped

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us win our first national championship in 1997. But they came because they were all recruited by

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Auburn and we lost. But because of the way we respected them and by the way how it worked out

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they when they didn't have the opportunity at UCLA and more, they came back to where the next

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where they were where they were respected. Wow. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about dual meets.

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You have a fantastic dual meet schedule this year. You have not shied away from great opponents.

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You scheduled Power Four teams such as Virginia Tech, South Carolina, North Carolina, which I

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know got canceled. But you also your schedule consists of some other swimming powerhouses like

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UNC Wilmington, Emory, Wingate. I want to know a little bit more about how you approach dual meets.

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You know, one one topic that comes up a lot is suiting up for meet. When do you put on tech suits?

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How do you how do you approach suiting up at dual meets? And in general, how do you evaluate

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where your swimmers are at, you know, through the season before you ever hit those championship meets?

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Yeah, good question. And I'll start first with, yeah, UNC was canceled because of Hurricane Helene.

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Unfortunately, we couldn't get around campus. It was a little tough but and lost some power. But

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Mark and I swim each other each year. Usually we have Duke on the schedule except for this year.

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So we're very blessed to have people who want to come here as well. And we travel to them.

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But we we compare when we start the season, we explain dual meets similar to the classroom.

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So every dual meet is a quiz to see where we are in that phase of training. And that's how I

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scheduled the dual meets in each phase of training. Then every our midseason is the midterm.

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And without a whole lot of rest, it is just to see for us to get notes on who responds really

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well without the rest who keeps getting better throughout. So we'll back it up. Who who's coming

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home strong, who's getting out fast, all the different things we're looking at the intangibles,

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not necessarily the times at the midseason. And then obviously, we're always preparing for the

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final exam, which is NCAAs, or the Olympic trials, or in if it's that type of year, or the

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conference championships for us right now being in our reclassification phase. Wearing suits has

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to make sense. It sometimes is driven by what other people do. And you say, Hey, guys, you put

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it in your team's hands and say, they decided to wear suits. What do you want to do? You want to

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be in the race? How do you want to do? How do you and you have a good strong captain team, they say,

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we're fine. We're comfortable. We can live with the results one way or the other, or we're going

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to switch and let's see what happens. And, and that's good. That's one way, not my favorite way.

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The other way is well planned out. I'm not against suits. Having coached with Coach Marsh and

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at Team Elite is that we've learned that you can wear suits and swim fast a lot. And so we're not

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against it. But I think it has to be agreed upon the two teams that are racing and what makes

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sense. What do we want to see out of this out of this quiz or midterm, right? And if we can leave

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better than we came in, then that's, that's great. Then we've done our job. And that's what we look

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forward to doing. And that's how we approach suits, whether we wear them again, we're not against

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them. We'll wear them in practice a lot. Because what I learned here about NASCAR and in NASCAR

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country is that you don't drive another car when you're learning how to race or getting ready for

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a race, because that if that's not the car you're racing, it's going to feel different. So why

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wouldn't we learn how and give feedback at swimming at higher levels of speed, wearing the suits we're

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going to be wearing racing. So I agree with that. You know, I've always thought that coaches should,

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shouldn't want to be surprised at the end of the year, one way or the other, you should have a good

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feel for what your athletes are going to do when you get to that final exam. Yeah. And if you never

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put on a suit, if you're never swimming fast, you're guessing at the end. Yeah. And I'm going to add

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one more little thing to that as well, is we really do our sport a disservice when we, and this,

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this kind of goes back to the grant thing. I would like to say thank you, Grant House, because

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what is the biggest, the biggest problem in our sport right now is the stuck in the mud,

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we can't change. This is the way we've always done it. And where we're doing ourselves a disservice is

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that the younger kids these days need more instant self-gratification. And right now,

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imagine what it does to a kid and their parents when they pay the money they pay or invest the

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money they invest, invest emotionally into the years long training. And it does, they have the

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flu or cold or something doesn't work right. And now you have to go another year before you can

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learn how to swim fast again or swim fast again. It's not a good feeling and they probably will

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leave the sport. We need to give them something more to show them why, like I, every three weeks,

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I do 10, 100 kick on three minutes where we measure our percentage drop. And when we do that,

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we have a team goal. And sometimes at their hardest thing, it's hard for them to see that they could

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be any better. And they dropped another percentage and their kick average or another, their average

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has gotten better. And that is so rewarding, but you have to be able to see the progress.

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And that's how we're going to keep people in our sport and going just so that doesn't make totally

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not a lot of sense. But the thank you to the Grant House thing is all of this mix up as comfortable,

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uncomfortable as it is. If we have the right people in charge and we have the right leaders in place,

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we will come out better. And we always have. But if we constantly find ourselves saying,

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I don't feel comfortable with this because it's not the way we do it, we've got to change our

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mindset. Because I mean, to get TV time to capitalize and leverage on women in sport being

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the fastest growing, we've got to get our women on TV more. We've got to do a lot. We've got to

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change our format. It doesn't do any good to have an exciting 200 medley relay upfront and then 1000

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free after. We've got to find new ways to use trends and statistics to find audiences that are

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excited by this. And to do this, that's how we're going to save our sport. It's not going to be by

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saying this is the way we've always done it. I agree completely. I was at a dual meet last weekend

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and it was really exciting after that relay and then the 1000. It just sucks the energy right out

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of the room and then it gets fun again. But I turned to the person sitting beside me and I said,

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did somebody just sabotage dual meets on purpose? Like, is this why we structure it this way?

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And it drives me nuts. All right. I have one final question for you outside of swimming.

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What is the most fun sporting event to watch at Queens? Women's lacrosse. I say that because my

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daughter just graduated, but played five years women's lacrosse here and just amazing sport.

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We've had, we've been blessed with an amazing coach and it just, the way they were coached

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and the speed at which they played the, and they were fortunate to play for a national championship

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in D2 and do well on the ASUN immediately. It's like an orchestra. You can really, it's beautiful

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to watch them. And some people with men, you see a lot of hitting and that's exciting in itself.

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But when you're not hitting and you have the ball flying and you have people showing up in places

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where you don't even expect them because that's just where they know. And the, some of the shots

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that are taken, it's just an amazing sport of speed, high hand coordination, everything.

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Oh, that is awesome. Coach, thank you so much for spending time answering these questions.

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I really appreciate it. I think the people that listen to this, read this, have learned a lot

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more about Queens and I'm really, really excited to see what you do in the water this year.

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Your recruiting class looks amazing. Your team is swimming great. I can't wait to see what you do

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at the end of the year. Thank you. Have a great one. Thank you very much, Coach.