Welcome to the SwimIntel Spotlight. I'm Jamie Bailey and today we have one of the absolute
best coaches in all of swimming, Coach Bill Dorenkott, Director of Swimming and Diving
at The Ohio State University. Coach Dorenkott is a five-time Big Ten Coach of the Year,
backing up seven Big Ten team titles, nine top 20 NCAA team finishes, 82 individual Big
Ten Conference Champions, over 400 NCAA qualifiers, and coached multiple Olympians, including
a gold medalist as well as a world record holder. Coach, it's awesome to have you here.
Thank you for coming on. Jamie, I appreciate the opportunity to share and look forward
to our conversation. Alright, so you're at Ohio State, one of the top programs in the
country. You've got to have hundreds, maybe thousands of kids just dreaming of swimming
for you. Obviously, not everybody's going to make the cut. So just outside of raw times,
what's your process for figuring out who's a good fit for your team? Well, there's so
much more to it than just times. And I think, you know, I've been coaching collegially for
34 years, and I've never gone to a program that was a high achiever when we got there.
So we always took over dogs, but it's kind of like buying the worst house on the best
street in the neighborhood, right? And so the house had good bones. So whether it's
Ohio State or I was at Penn State, or in fact Ashland before that. And so, you know, we
built a strong foundation. We took our time. We were purposeful. But because we took over
programs that didn't have a high degree of success, we weren't getting the pick of the
litter in terms of recruits. So we really had to have a system that worked for us. And
so there's two things that I think we've done really well historically, and that is one,
found kids are a good fit for our program and institution, and two, developed the heck
out of them. And so I think that times and rankings can be a little bit misleading because
they don't tell the whole tale. I'll use as an example, one of our seniors this year,
Daniel Baltis. Daniel was a three sport athlete coming out of high school, never swum a long
course meet or meet in his life, was from Minnesota, great student, great family, obviously
very athletic. And he came recommended from a close friend of mine said, you know, you
really should give this kid a chance. You know, and here we are four years later, and
you know, Daniel semi to the Olympic trials in the 50 free. He's, he's an anchor on our
relays. And so, you know, that just speaks to, it isn't just times, it's athleticism,
it's how far into your swimming career are you, it's technique, it's recommendations,
it's human qualities, it's everything. So, you know, how important is it for you to actually
see a recruit either swim in person or on video before you decide this is somebody I
want on my team?
Really have to see it. And I'll use Maggie McNeil as an example. So Maggie was, she's
from, from Canada. And in fact, just up across the lake from, from Cleveland, Ohio, and
a small club team. And she was a good swimmer on a high school, you know, so before she
broke out of the world stage. And my assistant and I drove up there and we knew we liked
her a lot just as a person. And within five minutes of watching her practice, we offered
her a full ride and just that movement underwater, you couldn't coach it. And sure enough, she
proved us wrong. Unfortunately, it wasn't at Ohio State, but that's a great example,
right?
Yeah.
So I was checking out your roster and it looks like your women's team has a lot of sprinters,
you know, more majority sprinters than anything else. But, you know, especially this year,
your men's team is leaning more toward distance. Do you plan that out intentionally? Or, or
does it kind of just happen based on the recruits you get, the recruits you see? And do you,
do you actually search out for versatility or are you more about finding those specialists?
Well when we, when we combine the program eight years ago, so I've been at Ohio State
for 17 years. I've been with the women for 17, the men for eight. When we combine the
program eight years ago, on the men's side, we're very purposeful that we're going to
build a championship caliber program around sprinting, relays, and diving. And that's
exactly what we did. We had some staff turnover and as a function, some of our sprinters were
graduating and we were left with a hole. And at that time, really the distance kids were
the ones we were able to get. So we're a little top heavy on the men's side in distance right
now. And so we have to fix that so that our relays get stronger at both the conference
and the national level. On the women's side, historically, when I say historically, really
over the past eight years, our strength has really come in the relays and in the sprint
events. And so we've attracted a lot of kids that, that are, you know, want to be a part
of that.
Yeah. All right. So let's, let's talk about the Grant House Settlement and, you know,
all these changes that are happening across college sports. Power Four teams really appear
to be, you know, affected the most by these changes. So what, what adjustments are you
seeing coming in terms of roster size, available scholarships, resources, or, or other areas
of your particular program?
Well, I think it's going to vary one conference to conference and two institution to institution.
So the settlement said that in the sports of swimming and diving, that we can have a
roster cap of 30 athletes. Historically at Ohio State, we've carried 40 athletes. We've
carried 34 swimmers and six divers. And I was able to negotiate that in part because
we believe in developing athletes. So we'll have some kids that maybe as sophomores or
freshmen can't help us, but by the time they become a junior, they can crack our scoring
roster or they can make a relay. And it was a pretty hard sell just to get to 34 and six
because the national average was around 28. And so my boss had said, look, we want you
to carry 28 athletes. That's what the average is nationally. And I said, well, correct me
if I'm wrong, but if I'm average, you're going to fire me. And he said, no, that's probably
right. And I said, well, if you look at the top five teams in the country, we've benchmarked
with Florida and Texas and Indiana, and they always, they carried big rosters, especially
on the men's side. And so we did the same. So this settlement was, was coming to fruition
over the summer. And we're hearing all kinds of rumors. We're hearing 22 on the guys side
and we're hearing 30. And sure enough, it sounds like they agreed that 30 was the right
number. So at Ohio state, we've made the decision we're going to carry 25 swimmers and five
divers. Five divers is probably more than a lot of teams will carry, but historically
diving at Ohio state has been a real strength and we want it to continue to be a strength.
We've heard, and I certainly can't speak for other leagues that, that the SEC on the men's
side is going to be 22. And you can kind of project out and look and say, you could guess,
all right, they're probably going to carry this many swimmers and this many divers. And
then you can look at their roster and you can say, are they have this many seniors graduating?
They've got this, these many kids committed, you know, they're going to be 12 over their
cap. And so those kids have to go somewhere, but every school in the country is doing that
same math. And so what we're seeing is that the roster spot in some cases is more valuable
than the scholarship, because at the end of the day, a lot of kids just want the opportunity.
And with the way swimming has been in the past, where the most of college could give
was 9.9 scholarships on the guy's side, 14 on the women's side, most kids weren't getting
a full ride anyway. They were paying at least part of the freight to go to a respective
university. And so those roster spots have become gold. I can only share what we're doing
and what I'm hearing. And I won't go too much to the rumor part of it. We're going to get
a little bit more than 9.9. We're going to get a little bit more than 14. I'm not going
to tell you how much because I still want to have a competitive advantage. We won't
be close to 30 scholarships on either side, men's or the women's. We'll have a little
bit more on the women's side than on the men's. And that speaks to Title IX or gender equity.
And so that only makes sense. And so we'll continue to exist where we give out partial
scholarships. And sometimes we're able to add meridate onto it or we're able to add
maybe a military discount or some other form where we can package money to make it more
affordable for a kid to look at the school. What we're hearing even within the Big Ten
is some schools will be below what they were before. So they'll be below 9.9 or below 14.
Some will stay the same. And then I would assume there'll be a handful that'll move
up a little bit. What my idea is shared with us is to look at a school's annual revenue.
And that really tells the tale. Now at Ohio State, we're blessed. We have an annual revenue
of $290 million. However, we have 36 sports. You need 18 sports is the minimum you need
to be a Division I school. And so when you have other schools that have big annual revenues
but have smaller number of programs, they're able to have a little bit more in the way
of scholarships. And so one of the things that transpired, and I apologize for monopolizing
our conversation here, one of the things that transpired was with 36 sports, there's not
an appetite on behalf of athletic directors or presidents to cut sports. What you saw
happen during COVID was those presidents and ADs that cut sports, a lot of them lost their
jobs because there was such a public outcry on those institutional campuses to say no.
So our people were really opposed to that. And thank goodness they've come up with a
plan to keep all 36 sports. The other thing I think you're going to see is, and it'll
probably take three or four years to play out is, one, I'm not sure every athletic department
has a plan. Two, I'm not sure that every department has made that plan public. I'm not sure that
coaches always know the plan. And I'm not sure that coaches will actually share it for
fear of losing out on recruits, competitive equity, whatever you want to call it. So we're
pretty well positioned within the Big Ten. I don't know how we'll stack up nationally
in terms of our scholarship allotments, but I feel pretty good moving forward, at least
from an Ohio State perspective, that we'll continue to be able to put a good team in
the pool.
If the SEC does indeed go to a roster limit of 22, there is no room for error in that
roster when you get into NCAA's conference. Do you think the Big Ten is going to have
a significant advantage having a roster limit of 30 versus 22?
Well, I don't know because there's a chance some of those schools in the SEC will go to
22 full scholarships. And so that's absolutely an advantage. But the ability to develop eight
extra athletes, that for sure helps. You know, it's not just going to be opportunities person
for person. It's also going to be events. So if you look at NCAA track and field, most
programs in track and field have to choose, are we going to be a sprint program, are we
going to be a hurdle program, are we going to be a field program? And I think that you're
going to see not just less opportunities for men, I think you're going to see less opportunities
for distance swimmers and 200 flyers and 400 IMers because most programs are probably going
to stack their roster with sprinters to field great relays.
Oh, that's really interesting. So what do you think happens to some of the smaller,
less funded programs that opt into the settlement, you know, when all of this shakes out?
Well, you know, everybody thinks that there's going to be a trickle down effect. Now, it's
a little bit like musical chairs. There aren't going to be enough chairs when the music stops.
But the question becomes, can you be creative in terms of what you offer? And so I'll give
you an example. My sense is that some programs, and certainly we're considering this, are
looking at something that would be the equivalent of a JV program. And so what that would be,
it would be a club on your college campus and it would be an elite club. It would be
a club for some of the top athletes in the country. And so there'd be two things there.
One is when you get to a level that you're competitive at a Big Ten and or an NCAA level,
that's the first piece. Or the second is maybe you're a one event guy. And so for us, we
have three goals annually. The first is to compete for a Big Ten title. The second is
to be consistently in the top ten in the country. And the third is to put kids on their respective
countries, national and international teams. And so if we do that year over year, my boss
is going to be pretty happy. Our kids are going to be happy. And we're going to have
a really good product in the pool. A lot of kids coming out of high school don't have
a second event or a third event. To compete for a conference title or to compete at the
national level, you need to develop those second and those third events. And so sometimes
that just takes time. And so one of the things that we're proposing is putting a program
together for those kids to be able to develop.
Yeah. You know, you mentioned the backlash that happened during COVID when ADs cut programs.
We saw a lot of those programs come back. They didn't stay cut for very long. Do you
think given that history and these changes, do you think Olympic sports in college are
in danger across the board?
I don't want to go that far yet. I think we're heading that way. And I think if we don't
come up with a better model, we will be in trouble. And I've seen different data, but
anywhere between 65 to 80% of the Summer Olympics, Summer Olympians were developed on college
campuses. So we are a big part of that model. And we want to continue to be a big part of
the model into the future. And if we don't come up with a better mousetrap, for lack
of a better word, we're going to become a little bit irrelevant. And so I think we need
to be purposeful. I think we need to be proactive. And I think we need to be the best stewards
of our own sport.
You know, even outside of swimming, we talk about football and other college sports. I've
heard a lot of coaches talk about how they're going to leverage the transfer portal a lot
more moving forward. You know, obviously in sports like football, there is a win right
now or else kind of atmosphere. Do you plan on leveraging the transfer portal more going
forward? Or do you prefer to get your recruits out of high school so you can develop them
kind of from the start of their collegiate career?
Well, it's interesting. This is a good question. And one of the reasons I'm a subscriber to
your product is because, you know, anecdotally, I always felt a certain way, but I actually
wanted to see if it was true. And so our program, if you're to look at it, it takes anywhere
between six and 18 months to kind of adapt to what we do and how we do it. And so in
my opinion, it's always better if you can get somebody who has four years of runway
to work with. At a minimum, it's got to be two years. So I'm not a one and done type
of guy. And then just a historical perspective, you know, the transfer, you've been able to
transfer for a long, long time. Transfers as a rule are a 50-50 proposition. Half the
time they work out and half the time they don't. And so I think, you know, as people
go that route, boy, you better do your due diligence on just, is it a good fit? Right?
Because there's a reason that people transfer. And sometimes those are valid reasons and
sometimes not so much. I'm always amazed that, you know, we've been pretty fortunate here.
We haven't had a lot of kids transfer, but when we have, the programs they've gone to
haven't called and asked. And, you know, I'm going to be kind, but I'm also going to be
honest. And so, you know, I think again, back to that idea of due diligence.
Yeah. You know, that's obviously one of our main goals at Swim and Tell is if we're going
to help an athlete find their college fit, we don't want to see them transfer. I mean,
I think we will have failed if we see them transfer. I don't like seeing redshirts either.
You know, I really think it's swimming in particular is a difficult sport to have to
persevere through, especially if you have to put all the yards in and you don't even
get to race. Right. So I hate seeing the transfers. I hate seeing the redshirts. I love seeing
when athletes go to a college and thrive. And you've had some really good success with
that over your career.
You know, I'm proud of it. And my hope is, is one, we've done our due diligence. But
I think the flip side of that is we've been brutally honest in the recruiting process.
Like, we don't pull any punches. It's not a sales, you know, it really is matchmaking.
So we're going out and we're being genuine. The gap is always the gap between theory and
testimony. So it's hard. You know, a kid comes to Ohio State, they go to a football game,
and they get some free meals. Man, this is the greatest. You say, no, no, no, this is
really hard. What we do is really hard. And then they get to their sophomore year, like,
man, what did I sign on for? Right. And that's a bad thing because that means I did a poor
job of explaining what it was really, really going to be like. But no, my, you know, my
two favorite days of the year, our last home dual meet when we honor our seniors and then
our team banquet. And we, you know, we graduate big class, we graduate 20 kids between the
men, the women, swimming and diving. That means you're doing something right. Yeah.
Okay. So if you grade out your recruiting class the last few years and just strictly
by time, just high school times, you actually come in fifth in the big 10 for both your
men's and your women's classes. Yet your women's team has won the big 10, four out of the last
five years. And your men's team has been second four out of the last five years. You're doing
this with development. You've had huge time drops for both your men's and your women's
teams. Some of the best progressions of any team across all of college swimming, any division
halfway through this season, your men are sitting at an average drop of over 4% from
high school, which puts you right there at the top of swimming right now, of all the
college swimming right now. How do you get elite development out of swimmers that are
already elite when they come into Ohio State as freshmen?
All right, Jamie. So I wonder if the skill of identifying kids who we know are going
to be good, I wonder if I'd gone to Wall Street, do you think I could have had that kind of
success? In all seriousness though, I kind of wear it like a badge of honor. I think
too many people get wrapped up in five star recruits and swim, swam, best of the rest
and everything else. And it just means nothing to me. And when kids come on a visit, my assistants
always get nervous because I meet with every recruit and a meeting will finish up and they'll
say, well, how'd it go? And I'll say, well, I offered her a full ride. And they'll be
like, you what? I'm like, trust me, dude, she's going to be good. And sure enough, a
couple of years later, like, all right, I get it. But there isn't necessarily a rhyme
or reason. Some of it's intuition, but some of it's just experience and reps. And no,
I love that. I love that. And quite frankly, my hope is this. I try to kind of fly under
the radar with some of our recruiting or letting other people know who we're interested in
because I think the word's getting out a little bit that we have a pretty good eye for what
we do. And we're able to find some kids in unusual places.
Well, if SwimIntel is successful, the word will get out because you're always at the
top. So it's really awesome to see that. So do you approach training men different than
women? I know your background. I think you were the women's coach at Penn State for a
while before you became Ohio State coach. Is it a different training methodology between
the two?
All right. So this is pre SwimIntel. You know, I was really good. You get recruits come in
and I could get them fast as freshmen. I could get kids fast right out of the gate. And then
they didn't improve a lot over four years. And I used to think it was them. It wasn't
them. It was me. It was our program. And so I made a pivot about halfway through my coaching
career and really kind of made a deal with myself that I wanted kids going lifetime best
as seniors, men and women. Your data as I looked, you know, I subscribed last year and
as I looked through the data, our women were best in the conference as freshmen, also best
in the conference as seniors. Our men were best in the conference as seniors, but they
were not very good as freshmen. And so we've made a little bit of a purposeful pivot this
year in some of the training that we're offering to the men because they weren't adapting at
the rate we needed them to. I still feel the same. I want our kids going their best stuff
as seniors. However, I don't want to lag my peers. And probably, you know, I had to be
a little bit demoralizing for the guys, just relative one comparing themselves to girls,
which is a mistake, but also comparing themselves to their peers, you know, who were getting
faster earlier on in their career. So I'm not sure if I answered your question or not.
No, no, no. That makes sense. So let's say you weren't coaching at Ohio State. Let's
say you were at a mid-major or you're at a D2 or D3. Would your training be any different
than it is at Ohio State? Well, you know, I didn't start swimming till my senior year
of high school. And I went to college, I swam in college, and my first job was a little
Division II school about an hour north of here, Ashland University. And I'm an Ohio
guy, you know, born and raised. And I didn't have much background in the sport. But at
that time, I read a book and it was a lot about Mark Schubert and how he had been winning
national titles. And he did it with underappreciated athletes, so 200 fly, 400 IM mile. So I thought,
man, we're going to do that as well. So we just recruited a lot of kids that weren't
getting as much love at a high level. And we ended up, you know, having a lot of success
in a pretty short period of time. And then, you know, I went to Penn State as a men's
assistant. And we really, you know, that team went from ninth to sixth to third to first
in the big 10 of our four-year period. And we really did it with sprints, relays and
diving, although we had some good kids in the other events. And so it's run the gamut.
What I'd probably do is reverse engineer it. I'd look at the league, you know, and I'll
use a great example, the guy at Akron has done a great job, right? Historically, I've
been in this, I've been in the Midwest forever. And the Mac's always been a good conference
and it's had some phenomenal, some of the best coaches in history, you know, Peter Lin,
you could go through it. So you just, you know, you see what the league allows, you
see where the weaknesses are, and then you attack those weaknesses.
Yeah. The Mac is really strong. Yes. Akron, Ball State, there's some great swimming, great
coaching, great recruiting in the Mac. It is a high end mid-major. Absolutely. No question.
Yeah, no question. Okay. So when you're looking, let's go back to recruiting. So when you're
looking at recruits, do you ever think about their current environment, like, you know,
their club coaches or how they're being trained? Is that something that helps you figure out
if they're going to thrive with you or do you just focus on the swimmer?
Oh, no, the club absolutely plays a role. So just who's coaching the club, historical
development, how they train, you know, what's left in the tank. And so, you know, there's
some clubs that a kid has really been trained at a high, high level, in some cases higher
than a collegiate level. And then once you figure that out, you know, I'll use a distance
swimmer as an example, a distance swimmer who doesn't like distance, but is being recruited
as a distance swimmer, but thinks they're going to get to college and it's going to
be fun, different, or they're going to become a sprinter. That's like a recipe for disaster.
Meaning now, you know, and that's where it just kind of goes back to that process. You
just really have to be honest. You know, one of the most interesting metrics of your database
is the corollary between the club they come from and the program they're looking at. And
I haven't done a deep enough dive, but just initially looking at it, I think it's probably
pretty close to correct, right? If you look at like the top five, the bottom five, and
there are some look, and I'm not certainly not going to name names, but there's clubs
where kids go to college and get faster. And then there's some that they don't.
Yeah, you know, it's, it is, it's burnout. You know, we see kids coming out of these
clubs and they've been swimming 10,000, 10,000 yards a day since they were 13 years old.
They're done. They're done. When they get there, we see injuries, you know, where, where
their shoulders are shredded by the time they get to college and, and they don't want to
do it anymore. So, you know, when you're, when you're looking at these clubs, do you
ever look for or have a preference for clubs that are high yardage environments, low yardage
environments or, or a particular training style that you feel like really kind of molds
well blends well with what you do?
Well, you know, so, so I'll, I'll, I'll name three guys that, and this goes back to our
conversation about the, the house case that I don't know today. I'd be able to give them
a spot on our team. You know, one is Charlie Clark, right? Charlie's been on the U S national
team now for four years. I don't think he was state champ coming out of high school
before 26, five and a free was his top event. But what I loved about Charlie's every time
I looked at the results, he swam every single event at a meet. He never scratched finals.
So, you know, in basketball, they talked about gym rats. Charlie was a swim rat. He just
loved the sport. You know, use, use Hunter Armstrong. Hunter was a junior national qualifier
out of high school. I think I offered him 10%. His brother went to West Virginia. He followed
his brother and you know, after freshman year, he called us up, wanted to transfer and certainly
came up here and the rest is kind of history. And then Daniel Baltus, who we talked about
before, right? Who's just a late bloomer. You know, I see it a lot that the kid who
was second or third in the state, a lot of times will pass the kid who was first because
they're still hungry. Yeah. Okay. So you talked about swimming fast all the time and talked
about, you know, swimming, you know, enjoying those meets. What's your take on dual meets?
You know, some, some coaches that they're all about hyping them up, making them more
exciting for fans. Others just kind of see them as a distraction from the end of season
grind. You know, our dual meets, are they a big part of your strategy or are you more
like, yeah, let's just get through them. I got to get to the end. I may have to rethink
our philosophy on dual meets and I can just share a historical perspective. So always
coaching in the Midwest or a little bit East in Pennsylvania, we've been blessed that there's
so many programs within a bus ride away. And so you could save some money by just, you
know, taking a bus out and then coming back. And when I was at Penn State, we didn't have
a great facility. So we had to travel a lot. But again, we're fortunate that within a three,
four hour drive, there were a ton of teams we could race. What I believe is, is one,
there's not a lot of learning that goes on in a straight up dual meet. So you drive somewhere,
you swim two hours, you get back in the bus, you come back and then the kids forget about
it until two weeks later when they swim their next dual meet. So I like a multi session
or multi day meet because there's learning and there's coaching and there's teaching
and there's adjustments that can happen. Second, is it cost effective? So we're going to go
out to Notre Dame the third weekend of January. And I love that meet. It's a two day, three
session meet. We get a ton of bang for our buck and it's really, really hard. Meaning
you guys have a lot of events in a short period of time. It's kind of a finisher. It matches
up with our training well to prep us for the big 10 meet that's going to be two, three,
four weeks after that. That being said, if I take two teams out there, I stay two nights,
I've got to feed them hotel, it's going to cost my program $50,000, $50,000 a ton of
money. And so when you talk about programs, you know, getting cut, again, I think we have
to be great stewards of our resources. And so where do we get the most bang for our buck?
You know, if it's competition, whatever it might be. Now at Ohio State, we're blessed.
People love to come to this facility because it's such a great facility. So we don't have
to travel as much. We're able to save a little bit of money there. But I probably in terms
of promotion or self promotion, we probably have to spice it up a little bit in terms
of dual meets. You know, so I'll pitch you right now. I think we should swim Teton and
you know, Teton is that team up north. We should swim Teton the Friday after Thanksgiving
annually. The next day is the football game. We could get it on the Big Ten network, make
it a made for TV deal, suit both teams up. It would be electric and be great for both
of our programs. That would be awesome. I would love that. That would be awesome. Yeah.
Okay, so you said suit up. So this is a big debate in swimming. You know, do you like
having your team suit up and go absolutely all out and dual meets, maybe a drop taper
or do you save the big performances for championships? Like in other words, does racing fast in
season help you in your strategy in your development or are you just burning matches when you do
that? Well, I am of the belief that you only have so many bullets in the gun, right? And
actually my good friend Ray Lewis said you can only go to the well so many times. And
so I think you need to be judicious with with just because you can do something doesn't
mean that you should do something. I'm certainly not opposed to it, but it's not just physiological.
It's also psychological. And so I want our kids peaking. I want our best performances
to be in February and in March. And then there's a second piece to this. And the piece is,
are you using the suits to augment performance or using them as a crutch to kind of cover
over things that you didn't do or haven't gotten done or haven't developed? And that
can't be the case. You can put a suit on any time in practice. I personally think second
half of the year, I want to put a suit on at least once every other week. So whether
it's in a meet or whether it's in practice doesn't really matter. The last piece is this
is we're not going to do it. There's going to be no gamesmanship. So I'm never going
to let a team get get an advantage at my expense, and I'm not going to do it to the other team.
So we're gonna have a conversation with the coach and say, is this something that that
makes sense? It works well with your plan. If so, let's let's do it. And if it doesn't,
then that's okay as well. Yeah, I like the balance because the one thing that that I've
I've always hated about the sport were coaches that basically we're going to train through
every meet, you're never going to swim fast. But, you know, we're going to taper you and
you're going to swim great that one time that year. And oh, let's just hope you don't get
sick. Let's just hope I don't screw your taper up. Because if I do, then you're gonna have
to wait an entire next year to know where you really stand in your training. And that
that I hate. I think there's a balance between that and putting on a suit every meet.
Jamie, I used to be that coach, right? Like if anything, it was like it was like medieval,
right? Like anything you just beat the heck out of kids all season long. And then you'd
rest them and they'd swim faster and you thought you had a good taper like you didn't. And
so that's you know, when I look at year over year improvement, and then and then where
do you stack up nationally against your peers? I think those are better benchmarks for for
maybe a successful plant well planned program and adaptation. And then then they just beat
somebody up so bad that they they couldn't get out of their own way.
Well, and I think it also probably this is anecdotal. I think it can help with retention.
You know, I know being around swimmers, you know, the the excitement when they see that
progression, you know, they see that that time on the board and it feels like okay,
you know, I put the last eight weeks I have I have killed myself, but look, I'm seeing
the results. And I think, you know, you can get a lot of burnout if you don't kind of
give them those wins as they lead up to those championship meets. You know, retention isn't
great in the sport. We lose one out of six swimmers as freshmen before they go to the
sophomore year at the D1 level. And that's that's a pretty that's a pretty good chunk.
And it's evenly distributed between, you know, power fours, mid majors across the board.
And so I think anything that helps with that retention could potentially, you know, help
the sport as well.
The sport and what it takes to be good at this sport is is just it's it's so so difficult.
Right. And so I have I have an unbelievable appreciation. I don't care if you're the fastest
or the slowest kid on the team, your willingness to commit to that process. And, you know,
and Eddie Reese used to say it so well, but just just if you got better, it's a win. Right.
Like, and you've got better year over year over year. Man, that's a big win. And so,
you know, I'm with you. I get really and, you know, having kids go faster is a motivator
for everybody. So, you know, we started the conversation talking about picking a big 10
team. Now, that's only a December pick. We're going to do it again in February and then
we'll do it for real. And we'll do it in January. Then we'll do it for real in February. But
but some of the things that we look at is who do you want on that team that's going
to make everybody around them better. And it's not always the kid who wins the event.
Sometimes it's the kid who moves from, you know, 48 up to 16. You know, sometimes it's
the kid who never scored before and makes a B final as a sophomore or a junior. And
so, no, there's the wins behind the wins.
When you get together with your coaching staff, are you guys writing down what you think is
going to happen at Big 10s? And do you go back and kind of grade against your predictions?
We absolutely do. And I would divide my staff into optimists, realists and pessimists. And
I consider myself a realist, but I've got some some true optimists on my on my staff.
And you know, we'll just put we'll put, you know, two A's and a B or two B's and a C.
And, you know, you kind of take it with a grain of salt, depending on who's who's giving
the information.
That's great. All right. Last question. What do swimmers and coaches do for fun on campus
besides winning big big 10 titles in swimming and football?
You know, our kids, we've got and I'm not just saying this, we have a really, really
good group of kids. Right. And so it could be something as silly as in the spring when
the season's over. The athletes have a swimmer formal. Right. And they all get dressed up
and they rent someplace out and they all go down there, which I think is pretty creative.
You know, they have they have quite a bit of fun around Halloween and hopefully it's
wholesome, healthy fun. You know, our kids are here year round. Right. We're blessed
in that we can keep our kids here all year round. Summer is a ton of fun. We get a lot
done. But they really get to explore Ohio and see all four seasons. And then, you know,
we've a pretty diverse team. We have kids from not just all over the country, but all
over the world. And so it's, you know, just it's a it's a cool place to be a young person.
Right. It's pretty hip, hip city and, you know, good, good foodie town as well.
Yeah. Yeah. I've been on campus. It's awesome. It's a great it's a great environment. It
is a great college environment to just every sport is fun there. So when recruits come
out and their parents join and their parents are a little bit envious, they're like, college
wasn't like this when I when I went to school. You know, my wife and I said this a lot when
we were touring for my daughter. We said over and over again, can we can we redo college?
Because this looks so much more fun than what I did. Oh, there's no question. Yeah. Coach,
thank you for coming on. I really appreciate the thoughts, the insights. I'm really excited
to see where your data ends up. You know, at the end of the year, I'm excited to see,
you know, you had new additions to the to the Big Ten Conference. So conference championships
are going to be wild across all the realignment conferences is going to be wild. I can't wait
to see that the swimming is insane in the Big Ten. So good luck. Can't wait to see the
data. And again, thank you for coming on. Well, Jamie, thank you for being a fan of
the sport. And thank you for the service that you do for athletes and coaches and recruits
with SwimIntel. All right. Thanks, coach. All right. Bye bye. Bye.