All right, welcome to the SwimIntel Spotlight. I am Jamie Bailey. And today I am with coach
Jeff Dugdale, director of swimming at Queens University of Charlotte. Coach Dugdale, thank
you for taking the time to talk with me today. Thank you for having me, Jamie. I appreciate
it. All right, let's start with a bit of background of the success that you've had at Queens.
Queens is a division one team that swims in the Atlantic sun conference where you finished
second last year at conference championships for both your men's and women's teams. This
season will be your third season as a division one program. Prior to that, you won seven
consecutive NCAA division two national championships as a team, which is simply remarkable. In
14 years at Queens, you have racked up 14 NCAA team championships between your men's
and women's teams, 124 individual NCAA championships and 735 NCAA all-American swims. The success
you've had at the championship level speaks for itself. Here's my question. If I am a
high school recruit looking to swim in college, why else should Queens be at the top of my
list? That's a great question. I feel strongly because Queens is so unique in many ways that
it's a smaller, intimate school in a big city, but right in the shadows of the big city,
literally 1.5 miles away from uptown Charlotte, the 14th largest city, fourth fastest growing,
which gives us a great living laboratory to gain valuable experience and move and matriculate
into adulting nicely with good experiences. Usually, internships come with pay in this
type of city in Charlotte. More importantly, we exist to build leaders for life. That's
what we exist to do. We are a school that really embraces a one size fits one attitude.
Each athlete, we really sit down and take time to understand who they are and what they
need and you will have a role within our program. Having a role, although sometimes not the
NCAA score, sometimes not the conference score, but if you play your role to the fullest,
you will wear a ring and you will leave a legacy bigger than anything that you could
do in swimming. Again, have learned something at a much higher level than you could if you
just sat in a classroom or swim in a program of a ton of people and just been another number.
Here you actually have a spot and have a place to impact others.
Well your recruiting track record has been fantastic over the years. What are the absolute
most important things you consider when deciding if you're going to recruit a particular student
athlete to Queens?
Yeah, the student athlete has to be able to articulate the why they want to come to Queens.
That's what gives us a large yield rate in coming to Queens is the ability to say, I
want this because and this using swimming and using the platform and knowing the history
of Queens, I will be able to achieve this upon matriculation into adulting. And we help
them by providing them quite the guideline. We have the vision of we exist to build leaders
for life. We have the framework of the values to build upon the values they bring from the
home and that's excellence as a lifestyle, not as an event, communicating early and often,
character what you do when nobody's watching, service, urgency in the classroom and in the
pool, teamwork and teamwork. And so those values then help them matriculate into being
global minded, agile in their thinking, decisive in their decision making, honorably engaged,
civically, civic minded and civically engaged and professionally adept. So when we give
them that that continuum continuum or that that pathway to adulting that what happens
is they usually have the aha moment to be able to tell me how they will follow that
and be able to engage, leverage and ultimately take advantage of it. And those people thrive
here, thrive. But it means that when somebody doesn't and this is I think what makes us
different is I really work with our coaches to be okay with telling somebody no. And so
what we're doing is we're trying to make sure that we're not telling somebody no is we don't
we don't have to feel an urgency at any point to say yes just because they're a fast swimmer.
In fact, we spend a lot of time teaching our student athletes that they are not to leave
their legacy in times because at and no offense to others, but we will always recruit somebody
if that's your legacy. You need to leave your legacy and leadership and moving the needle
with your team. If you become better, you make your team better. I love that. That that is awesome.
You know, although Queens is in Charlotte, North Carolina, less than 20% of your athletes come
from the state of North Carolina. I believe it's for your women. It's around 10% for your men,
around 20%. You recruit not only from all over the US, but you also recruit internationally.
If an athlete wants to swim at Queens, what is the best way for them to get your attention?
Yeah, that's to reach out and and tell us why. Give us the why and I'm always willing to
listen. And believe me, you do not have to be the fastest swimmer. Although we are all about fast
swimming, you do not have to be the fastest swimmer. If you're going to make an impact and
leave a legacy in this program, I can give examples up and down of people who came and did not
leave one point on the tape, did not score one point, but everybody remembers them here as to
the impact they made. So it's an interesting statistic because I cert I truly believe in
my heart that Charlotte is a destination. North Carolina is a destination for people to come to.
The unfortunate thing is if you live in North Carolina, it's like cafeteria food, right? You
can say it's a great cafeteria food, but if you have it every day, then it becomes monotonous.
So I believe people in Charlotte want to find a destination somewhere else. And my example is
always this. Where do people that live in Hawaii go to? Where do they move to? I mean,
because everybody wants to go to Hawaii. Everybody wants to go, but then where do the people at Hawaii,
where do they go to? So what happens is I feel like for these many, the greater percentage of
people that come to Charlotte, it's because they truly see and can see the benefits of the 14th
largest city, fourth fastest growing and all that it has to offer. Those who live here tend to take
it for granted and want to go away, but then only to find it's important to get back. So that's an
interesting statistic. And that's one of the things I love about Swim and Tell, I'll tell you right now,
is I have this little saying that in God we trust all others bring numbers. And I love numbers.
Numbers help me make decisions, more importantly, numbers and trends help me ask better questions.
And that goes back to our recruiting is when I see a trend of going up or going down, I know that I
can ask my questions look different to that person to figure out the story and get the context that I
need to find out if they're going to be a good fit. Yeah. And I think, you know, I'm probably the
biggest data nerd you'll talk to. So share that in common. Let's talk a little bit about videos. So
college coaches we talked to, they're pretty split on whether or not racing videos are important
when they're evaluating a potential recruit. You know, for you, how important are videos
in the recruiting process, you need to see a swimmer swim before you're going to
make that offer or invite them for a visit. So the answer is I split, I sit right on the fence.
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
video because the clock is the trailer of all truths. And so if the if a person's four foot nine,
and they're the world record holder, I'm going to I'm going to accept that and be at ease with that.
Now, if they're at 4.9 and how much more improvement I can get, it may may be a little bit
different. But I if I even if I go and see somebody swim, I'm not always looking at how they swim
either. I'm looking to see how they interact with their teammates and their family. And so
family and their I'm looking for the intangibles because again, the clock says what it says.
Now, in my questions and the answers to my questions of where they are with their when I
talk to their coaches themselves and surrounding their support staff is I want to know more about
strength, flexibility, I want to know about mitochondria DNA, about where their mom where
they fit on the food chain where they what if they're the oldest child, if they're an only child,
if they're the middle or the youngest, I want to know more about the environment they're
surrounding that if this environment will be will help take them to the next level.
Because I have a confidence in our strength and conditioning program. I have confidence in the
culture of our program and what that looks like. And I have confidence in our ability to coach.
Now, here's what in in college athletics, by the time they get to me, I'm making a grave error if
I'm trying to change somebody's stroke completely, because that it's too late. What they're going to
learn at up until the age of 12 to 15 is what they are, then we build strength around it and
strategy around it and build speed around it. But from there, there's not much if I'm going to break
somebody down, I will not have enough time in four years literally to completely change them for the
most part. Yeah, makes complete sense. Let's talk about the athletic scholarship situation in Queens.
Are you fully funded, partially funded? And you know, how do you decide how to allocate your
scholarship money amongst all of your athletes? Yeah, no, that's a great question. And we, we,
in division two, we were fully funded in division one, we are very close to fully, well,
everything changed two weeks ago, right? We were very close to being fully funded in the men.
And we were moving up the ladder in the women. But that takes time. We couldn't just do it. But we
did make a nice move up towards getting to where we need to get to. But now it all that that word
comes or that phrase comes in to different play because fully funded is 30 scholarships now.
And there will probably be as I know right now, two schools, Tennessee, I think, and Texas, I'm
guessing that have the money to do that. And, and, and the rest will find where that where the medium
and this is where I think you're going to your company is going to play an amazing role in helping
people find that law of diminishing return and what they really get. Right now we're we're the
benefactors again in recruiting going back to the recruiting of getting calls just this morning at
645. Hey, I have two stellar athletes that have lost their spots on a power four team. Do you have
room for them in 2025? Now here's the good news in a mid major that we have our option and in the
a son, our commissioner has decided that in doing his research, and again, this could change by
noon time today, but in doing their research with through the presidents and athletic directors,
that right now every school can do what they want. They can either opt in or opt out. And opting out
means you just work a business as usual, you're going to work to the equivalency, and you're going
to work to the however your school goes, but you can't go over 9.9 and men and 14 and women. If you
opt in, you've got to opt in for all sports and you've got to do it. You're going to limit your
rosters and swimming that is 30 and 30, unless the conference has decided differently, which we've
seen recently with the SEC going to 22 on the men's side, 30 on the women's side. And they said
because of Title IX and the amount of sport offerings. So there's a lot going there. So how
I use my is we work because we're a very high academic school. Our women hold a 3.8 grade point
average. We have, we're very blessed that we get our women coming in, get a lot of academic money,
and then we usually, if we can, add some athletic, and then we build a team around somebody getting
something academic or athletic. And then the same with the men we really build around. And then we
look at AI in the offerings that you have to kind of say, can we predict through asking the right
questions and through looking at the right data and trends, say, can we go ahead and bet where
they'll end up in the future versus trying to do what other schools say is you've got to be here
before I can give you here. Is we try to believe in them from the start because that's what we feel
is the right way to go. And it's been a winning formula for us to this point. Yeah, you brought
up the greenhouse settlement, the potential decreases in available roster spots at certain
conferences and schools. Personally, Swimintel, we've had three student athletes that are 20-25s
had their power four offers rescinded in the last three weeks. Yeah, and I would say that three is
a representation of about her club. I mean, we're, it's pretty amazing. One recruiting week and all
the friends all of a sudden the talk started changing because all their friends and they
wanted to commit early real quick because they were seeing they were getting things saying,
where are you? Do they have room for me as well? And these are really good swimmers.
But if I may get on my soapbox here a little bit about the greenhouse settlement because
Grant House, first of all, Grant House, I think it's and I say this, I say this with great care
to say ignorance is not a bad word. It's just not knowing, but there's a lot of ignorance
about the attacks on Grant House. Grant House is not going to bring down the NCAA. Grant House
exposed what was already an underlying condition that was happening. And the NCAA owns all the
responsibility for this because they were making decisions and trying to make decisions that were
not fair or reflective of the student athletes thoughts and causing people to make decisions
like the one and done and they different things having to go different routes in order to protect
themselves. There's more to it and I'm probably not articulating it correctly. But what I say is
what could bring down the NCAA is what is still left in what the NCAA does not learn from their
mistakes, they and continue to go down a path will be whether athletes vote to become employees or
not employees. That becomes a whole different ballgame. But collective bargaining is fair and
fair and helping athletes decide what's best for them and allows them to finish an education in
order to get to the next level and do some different things. And it just makes sense.
But right now, am I happy about where all the power lies? No, because all the power right now
lies in the student athlete and where that becomes dangerous is we're not doing them a favor
and helping build them to be leaders. Because what happens now is as any child is, they become
manipulative just based on what they know, and they know they have the whole power. So what that
is doing to the NCAA and where grants getting a bad rap is that's causing the NCAA institutions
to have to protect with what I call it, they're hoarding dollars. So a program if they need
1.4 million, they're looking at a program that's swimming or 1.2 millions of swimming.
And they're saying that's where I need to go if I need 1.2 million quickly. And I drop that program.
But that's only because right now, we're only human if we make human mistakes.
We cannot say sorry or go back and fix them. The student athlete has all the power to still
collect and do everything they want. And until we get that balance of power back, and I joke with
this halfway, that I think there should be two portals. One for the student athlete, one for
the coaches. And that's how we get balance back is that the student athletes can go if they want,
and the coaches can put people in if they want, if they're not fulfilling the business needs.
And their obligations. And then all of a sudden, that will quickly balance everything. But until
we find that balance, and I think it will come quickly, that we're going to see this big run on
the portal, and we're going to see these potential sports being cut because people have to quickly
find money. But when we get the balance, it will be easier to navigate and project where we're going
in the future. And that's my thought only. It's an opinion of one, and it comes from this office only.
We talked to a lot of coaches about just how everything's changing. And so many of the mid
majors, D2s, D3s, the coaches are actually excited about an increase of talent flowing
into their programs. Some of the Power Four coaches, a little bit more, let's just say uneasy
about how it's changing. What's your view at Queens? How do you think you're going to benefit
from these changes? We're absolutely, and we're probably, and I say most equipped, I don't want
to say we have experience in Division Two. We pretty much brought a whole other level of talent
in Division Two. And I mean, our vision was to, and I truly felt, there's no reason we shouldn't
have athletes that can't compete in Division One level. And so it was amazing. And we saw that,
yes, I believe there's going to be a home for everyone. But what's going to have to happen here
is not necessarily at the collegiate level. I believe it has to happen at the club level,
because a lot of times at the mid-major and at the Division Two level, what we saw and battled
against was a club coach wanting, and I understand it, so I don't blame them, but it's very similar
to high schools. They would rather see and tell and brag that they send 30% of their people to
Harvard, Princeton, to the Ivy Leagues than to the other schools. And in club swimming,
they would much rather say instead of, we produced athletes that accumulated a million dollars in
scholarships, they rather say, we had 10 athletes go Division One and to the Power Four. And that
seems to be a powerful thing. Sometimes we have to battle, hey, this is why we think it's right for
this athlete to come here versus going to another big school. But it's obviously those coaches want
their club teams to be able to say, hey, we send this many people to the Power Fours and to all
the other areas. So if we can get club coaches to really buy into the right fit for the student
athlete, I think we'll start to see parity and we'll start to see a lot of fast swimming all around.
I 100% agree. All right. We talked about how you approach recruiting athletes. I would like
to now talk about how you develop athletes. As you are well aware, Queens took the crown last
year for the top overall improvement progression for women last season, averaging a 4.6% drop in
best events from high school. You compare that 4.6% drop to the D1 female average of 1.4%
and you absolutely break our scale. So let's look at some examples. Riley Haigh, she comes into
Queen as a freshman with a 55 flat 100 free. Her junior year, she swims that 100 free at 50.18.
That is an 8.8% drop from high school. Sophia Lang has a high school best, 503 of 458. She drops
over 12 seconds by her junior year to a 446. Those are huge drops. What are you doing differently
at Queens to have so much better development than the average D1 program?
Yeah. So I think it comes to my mentor and David Marsh and working with him is we really thrive
on identifying athletes who haven't that are a little bit newer to swimming and that most other
people won't take a risk on. And we really, like Riley was a part-time year-round swimmer
and full-time high school swimmer and was getting pushed to swim college, but didn't even think she
was, she could handle college. And we had to really develop a plan for her and the one size fits one
thing, how we would get her and navigate her without overwhelming her and burning her out. But
she, we could see the talent in her. We could see the growth mindset. And that's again, through the
questions we asked, through the relationship we built, we saw that she had a growth mindset. She
was coachable. She talked not so much about swimming, but how she wanted to use swimming to become
how it was going to help her career and what she wants to do. And that became very important for
us. And we really were able to develop. And we had an athlete prior to her, Daniel Millili, who
just went through the same type of improvements out of high school to make the Olympic trials.
And she skipped everything, JOs, sectionals, all that to make Olympic trials as her first big meet.
And one of the things she saw that we could do it, we've done it before, we could do it again. And
sure enough, Riley, she's 22, mid to low in the 50 now too, and she's a captain in our program,
and she is thriving. Sophie, it's funny you bring up her 500 because to me, the most impressive is
her mile. I believe she almost dropped a minute in her mile. But Sophie was a fighter. Sophie,
like because of her size, a lot of people didn't believe that they could take a risk on her at a
bigger level. Sophie, I could see the potential for building some strength. And I saw an incredible
range from the mile all the way down to the 100. She could swim on our relays and do some different
things. She just had a mindset that was amazing. Now, Sophie is a mitochondria DNA recruit. So when
I look at Sophie's mom, Sophie's mom was a swimmer coach, she had the pedigree, and she had the
whereabouts and the intelligence to be able to be, again, a growth mindset. And so all we had to do
was beat it to her and give her the platform to thrive on. And the more we gave her and challenged
her with and the more she had fun with failure, and as we tried to push her further and she'd fail,
but yet break through a new barrier, that she just kept getting faster and faster. If she could do
another year with us, a fifth year, I have a feeling she would be even faster. But she's going
on, I think, with the FBI now. So she was recruited by Secret Service, FBI, a lot of the agencies,
but she's just got that mindset. That's awesome. So we talked about recruiting, we talked about
development, but your retention has also been fantastic. You hit a 100% return rate on your
freshmen women coming back for their sophomore year, multiple years in a row, and nearly 100%
return for your freshmen men. I think you only had one of your freshmen guys not return for their
sophomore season the last two years. What do you think are some of the main reasons you've had such
good luck with retention? And do you think your success in developing time drops factors in at all
here? Yes, I believe it does. But even those who the ones that you've talked about left didn't leave
to another program. They left, they made a choice to go and do something that was better for them or
something personal that happened. I think our yield rate comes from our recruiting. We ask the
right questions. We can say no when we need to say no. And no isn't always a bad thing. The
recruiting process is about finding the right place for both the athlete and the coach and the team.
And sometimes, I'll give you an example, is we have a basic engineering program, but we're more
liberal arts with pre-med and all that. But somebody who wants to be an engineer says,
I'll change my major because I want to swim there. That's a no, because they are ingrained
in their mindset. They will be bored. They will be unhappy here if they come. And so we then offer
to help them find the right place. But recognizing what makes you strong as a program, and I think
why we have such a good, as I started the program 15 years ago, and why we have such a good retention
rate is because I know this program inside and out. And my assistant coaches know this program.
Sometimes they get a little caught up and excited about how fast they are, and I have to jump in
and say they're not a good fit. And it's not because they're not good people. It's just because
this, we're not going to be able to give them what they need. When we do that, it really intrigues
and brings in even more people. And what happens is I usually get a big thank you from the team
when I see someone swimming well at another school saying, hey, thank you for your help because
this is exactly where I needed to be. And I say, I agree and good for you. And that's why I think
we have a good retention rate. Never stop recruiting them. That's one of the biggest things
is even before this new change in NCAA landscape with the transfer portal, I've always been taught
by Coach Marsh. That's how we won our first national championship was because we never stopped
recruiting our current team. And we are always respectful to the people recruited who didn't
come. And when UCLA dropped their program and Nick Shackle came and I mean, we had so many good
Andrews, Michael Andrews, Todd Kanagiser came and Randy Hartley came from UCLA to Auburn. That helped
us win our first national championship in 1997. But they came because they were all recruited by
Auburn and we lost. But because of the way we respected them and by the way how it worked out
they when they didn't have the opportunity at UCLA and more, they came back to where the next
where they were where they were respected. Wow. Yeah. All right. Let's talk about dual meets.
You have a fantastic dual meet schedule this year. You have not shied away from great opponents.
You scheduled Power Four teams such as Virginia Tech, South Carolina, North Carolina, which I
know got canceled. But you also your schedule consists of some other swimming powerhouses like
UNC Wilmington, Emory, Wingate. I want to know a little bit more about how you approach dual meets.
You know, one one topic that comes up a lot is suiting up for meet. When do you put on tech suits?
How do you how do you approach suiting up at dual meets? And in general, how do you evaluate
where your swimmers are at, you know, through the season before you ever hit those championship meets?
Yeah, good question. And I'll start first with, yeah, UNC was canceled because of Hurricane Helene.
Unfortunately, we couldn't get around campus. It was a little tough but and lost some power. But
Mark and I swim each other each year. Usually we have Duke on the schedule except for this year.
So we're very blessed to have people who want to come here as well. And we travel to them.
But we we compare when we start the season, we explain dual meets similar to the classroom.
So every dual meet is a quiz to see where we are in that phase of training. And that's how I
scheduled the dual meets in each phase of training. Then every our midseason is the midterm.
And without a whole lot of rest, it is just to see for us to get notes on who responds really
well without the rest who keeps getting better throughout. So we'll back it up. Who who's coming
home strong, who's getting out fast, all the different things we're looking at the intangibles,
not necessarily the times at the midseason. And then obviously, we're always preparing for the
final exam, which is NCAAs, or the Olympic trials, or in if it's that type of year, or the
conference championships for us right now being in our reclassification phase. Wearing suits has
to make sense. It sometimes is driven by what other people do. And you say, Hey, guys, you put
it in your team's hands and say, they decided to wear suits. What do you want to do? You want to
be in the race? How do you want to do? How do you and you have a good strong captain team, they say,
we're fine. We're comfortable. We can live with the results one way or the other, or we're going
to switch and let's see what happens. And, and that's good. That's one way, not my favorite way.
The other way is well planned out. I'm not against suits. Having coached with Coach Marsh and
at Team Elite is that we've learned that you can wear suits and swim fast a lot. And so we're not
against it. But I think it has to be agreed upon the two teams that are racing and what makes
sense. What do we want to see out of this out of this quiz or midterm, right? And if we can leave
better than we came in, then that's, that's great. Then we've done our job. And that's what we look
forward to doing. And that's how we approach suits, whether we wear them again, we're not against
them. We'll wear them in practice a lot. Because what I learned here about NASCAR and in NASCAR
country is that you don't drive another car when you're learning how to race or getting ready for
a race, because that if that's not the car you're racing, it's going to feel different. So why
wouldn't we learn how and give feedback at swimming at higher levels of speed, wearing the suits we're
going to be wearing racing. So I agree with that. You know, I've always thought that coaches should,
shouldn't want to be surprised at the end of the year, one way or the other, you should have a good
feel for what your athletes are going to do when you get to that final exam. Yeah. And if you never
put on a suit, if you're never swimming fast, you're guessing at the end. Yeah. And I'm going to add
one more little thing to that as well, is we really do our sport a disservice when we, and this,
this kind of goes back to the grant thing. I would like to say thank you, Grant House, because
what is the biggest, the biggest problem in our sport right now is the stuck in the mud,
we can't change. This is the way we've always done it. And where we're doing ourselves a disservice is
that the younger kids these days need more instant self-gratification. And right now,
imagine what it does to a kid and their parents when they pay the money they pay or invest the
money they invest, invest emotionally into the years long training. And it does, they have the
flu or cold or something doesn't work right. And now you have to go another year before you can
learn how to swim fast again or swim fast again. It's not a good feeling and they probably will
leave the sport. We need to give them something more to show them why, like I, every three weeks,
I do 10, 100 kick on three minutes where we measure our percentage drop. And when we do that,
we have a team goal. And sometimes at their hardest thing, it's hard for them to see that they could
be any better. And they dropped another percentage and their kick average or another, their average
has gotten better. And that is so rewarding, but you have to be able to see the progress.
And that's how we're going to keep people in our sport and going just so that doesn't make totally
not a lot of sense. But the thank you to the Grant House thing is all of this mix up as comfortable,
uncomfortable as it is. If we have the right people in charge and we have the right leaders in place,
we will come out better. And we always have. But if we constantly find ourselves saying,
I don't feel comfortable with this because it's not the way we do it, we've got to change our
mindset. Because I mean, to get TV time to capitalize and leverage on women in sport being
the fastest growing, we've got to get our women on TV more. We've got to do a lot. We've got to
change our format. It doesn't do any good to have an exciting 200 medley relay upfront and then 1000
free after. We've got to find new ways to use trends and statistics to find audiences that are
excited by this. And to do this, that's how we're going to save our sport. It's not going to be by
saying this is the way we've always done it. I agree completely. I was at a dual meet last weekend
and it was really exciting after that relay and then the 1000. It just sucks the energy right out
of the room and then it gets fun again. But I turned to the person sitting beside me and I said,
did somebody just sabotage dual meets on purpose? Like, is this why we structure it this way?
And it drives me nuts. All right. I have one final question for you outside of swimming.
What is the most fun sporting event to watch at Queens? Women's lacrosse. I say that because my
daughter just graduated, but played five years women's lacrosse here and just amazing sport.
We've had, we've been blessed with an amazing coach and it just, the way they were coached
and the speed at which they played the, and they were fortunate to play for a national championship
in D2 and do well on the ASUN immediately. It's like an orchestra. You can really, it's beautiful
to watch them. And some people with men, you see a lot of hitting and that's exciting in itself.
But when you're not hitting and you have the ball flying and you have people showing up in places
where you don't even expect them because that's just where they know. And the, some of the shots
that are taken, it's just an amazing sport of speed, high hand coordination, everything.
Oh, that is awesome. Coach, thank you so much for spending time answering these questions.
I really appreciate it. I think the people that listen to this, read this, have learned a lot
more about Queens and I'm really, really excited to see what you do in the water this year.
Your recruiting class looks amazing. Your team is swimming great. I can't wait to see what you do
at the end of the year. Thank you. Have a great one. Thank you very much, Coach.