All right, today we got coach Michael Kinross in the spotlight, who is currently University
of Pittsburgh's assistant coach.
He was previously at Sandpipers in Nevada, where he had a ton of success developing elite
club swimmers and coaching on the international stage with Team USA.
Now he's making the jump to college swimming at Pitt, and we're going to get into all of
it.
Why he made the move, what's different at the college level, and what the future looks
like for Pitt swimming.
Coach Kinross, it is great to have you here today, man.
Hey Jamie, really happy to do this.
All right, so let's start with this.
So you were crushing it at Sandpipers, one of the top club programs in the country, sending
swimmers to the biggest stages.
Why leave that behind and jump to the college scene?
What was it about college swimming that really just pulled you in?
Yep, good question.
Obvious question, right?
Honestly, there's a lot of different factors, some personal things, timing, both where we're
at with Sandpipers, where we're at with the Olympic cycle, and just me kind of personally
my life.
Coming out of college, I was always just planning on coaching swimming, and I really wanted
to get back into college coaching, or into college coaching, but really had no interest
in going to be a graduate assistant and going that route and working my way up the ladder.
And I was fortunate where I fell into a really good place at Barrington Swim Club and a great
mentor in Rob Emory, and got to work with him for three years.
So got pretty involved in club and age group level swimming, and I was coaching high school
at the time.
And then opportunity with Sandpipers came up and I applied for it and went out and met
with Ron, met with the team.
Two weeks later, I moved to Las Vegas.
That was September 2016, and at that point, college was just really on the back burner.
Always something I was passionate about, anybody that ever swam, Sandpipers will tell you,
that was something I was really proud of.
What we did with Sandpipers, putting athletes in college and helping them with that search
and really making a big deal about swimming at the next level.
But just the coaching part of it just never lined up.
Had a couple opportunities, but really wasn't interested or the timing wasn't right, wasn't
the right fit.
Really just loved what we were doing with club and what we're doing with the Sandpipers
was amazing, still looking back on and it was a great run.
And I really had no plans to try to leave this year.
Then out of the blue, I got a call from Chase Kreitler.
Chase has known me.
He actually coached me in college.
He was a graduate assistant in Eastern Michigan, my junior and senior year.
So known him since then.
We've always kept in touch through swimming.
He's always kind of looked after me and recruited a handful of my kids.
And he called me out of blue and was telling me about this position at Pitt and took a
multiple several hour phone calls, convinced me to come out and interview.
And I came out here Labor Day weekend and interviewed.
And at that point I realized I was going to have a very difficult decision to make.
Pittsburgh just really took me by surprise.
The city itself, I had never, never been here before.
I was totally blown away by the buildings, the history, the geography, the people, various
things like what people think they know about Pittsburgh as far as just blue collar, really
good wholeheart, even though it's not Midwest, they are very Midwest type people and me being
from Chicago just connected with that.
So I love the city and the weekend I spent here.
And then the team itself, really believe in the program that Chase is building.
He was very transparent with me about his first time being a head coach and what he's
learned and some of his trials and tribulations getting to this point, both with coaching,
both with staffing, management, all of that.
And I really connected with what he was saying.
And then him having hired Kirsten Mites, spent that weekend with her and really connected
with her with our backgrounds.
And then at the time, I didn't get to meet him when I interviewed, but he had hired Gideon
Lowe and I knew about Gideon's history, having he coached Bo Becker, who I got to know well
through his Sandpiper history and was also a total swimming nerd as a kid and knew all
about Gideon and Auburn and everything.
And so at that point, I'd realized that Chase had put together a really good team and believed
in the message he was sending and what Pittsburgh could become.
You know, they're not some super powerhouse team.
We're definitely working our way there, but I believe in what we're building here.
And the opportunity just seemed like too much of a good one for me to make this jump now
at my age and time.
And here we are.
Yeah, that's a big move from Nevada to Pittsburgh, right?
So do you have any surprises when you got to pick things you didn't expect about coaching
at the collegiate level that's just so much different than what you've been doing back
at Sandpiper's?
Sure, sure.
You know, it was a lot different.
Like moving back to the mid, just not even coaching related, moving back to the Midwest
was fall was awesome.
Never second guessed it.
Then the first time it snowed, I realized I didn't own a snow brush anymore for my car.
So that was that was a rude awakening for sure.
But the coaching coaching is it's funny how similar it is.
And I don't think that is similar to what we were doing at Sandpiper's.
It's just similar to like my overall just like kind of the way I coach and approach
it.
Like this isn't a knock against colleges or what necessarily just pumping up Sandpiper's.
It's like I just really believe in the relationship and treating the athletes like adults.
And it's very much a mutual relationship.
It's a we and now not what are you going to do?
What am I going to do?
It's how are we going to do this?
And it's how I approached it, especially with high school age kids.
That what we did when I was in Barrington and really that evolved in Sandpiper's.
And so the way I approach specifically working with the athletes here, it's it's really not
much different.
Very similar conversations, very similar approach.
You know, they're obviously a little bit further along in their lives, a little bit more mature.
So there's a little bit more of like real life conversations.
But like I haven't changed the way I approach interacting with the athletes at all, which
I think has made it really easy.
It seemed to fit in really well with the athletes.
They were super welcoming, able to just some random guy.
I started October 1st, so things were already well in motion.
Relationships, training, coaching.
And so Chase did a great job transitioning me in and the athletes were very welcoming
to it.
But the actual coaching itself, really not too much different.
The biggest thing for me and it's a good challenge is and it's what I what I it's not what I
wanted and it's not like it was lacking at Sandpiper's, but it's just something I knew
that was going to be different and I was looking forward to was collaborating.
You know, Sandpiper's, I had total autonomy over my training group every now and then.
Ron, Ron and I would talk about things we need to see or we would run a joint practice
once a week.
But it was pretty much my my show.
So coming here, things already established similar backgrounds of all of us coaches,
but different ways of doing things.
And most people don't have a background coming from what we're doing at the Sandpiper's.
And so the collaboration part has been a great challenge.
Learned a lot.
Then it's it's that's been the unique part for sure for me.
So you know, when you're at Sandpiper's, you were working with pretty elite athletes there.
You moved to a power four.
You're working with elite athletes.
So do you think that was part of this sort of easier transition that that just kind of
similar like athletic mentality to how they're approaching the sport?
Yeah, that's interesting.
I'm sure that helped.
And I think I think you kind of hit it there where you said like their mentality, like
most of them, not all of them, they want to be at the elite level.
I think truly the difference is like just it's really easy just for me to kind of pick
up on the background that these swimmers have, especially like the freshmen, sophomore who
haven't fully been ingrained in everything pit, like learning about which club they came
from or who their coach was and like just what their background was, whether they're
focused on high school swimming, they played water polo, whatever it was like that tells
a lot.
And that is a lot different than Sandpiper's where especially a kid that was within the
Sandpiper program and went all the way up the ladder from stroke school through mind
and neurons group, like there's a real like development and education with those kids
that a lot of these athletes don't necessarily have that we're helping them work through.
And that's more of a unique to Sandpiper situation in the system that we developed and are using.
But yeah, I think, you know, when we talk with some of the athletes that are in college
and talk about that, that comparison to what it's like swimming at a power four or mid
major or elite program, whatever, compared to what they did in club, you know, at club,
it's much more it's and I don't mean this in a mean way, but it's more of a selfish
mentality, right?
You know, you're swimming for yourself, right?
You know, it's not like you're wearing your team colors with as much pride as college.
But when you get into college, man, it is very much a team mentality.
I know high school swimming is different.
High school, you get more of that, but there is a shift in mentality from that.
It's me, me, me to, you know, man, how's our team going to do at ACC this year?
You know, do you see that with you see that kind of in that freshman freshman sophomore
click where they start to change kind of that mindset that it's not all just about you.
It's how you contribute a little bit.
You know, that's from wearing the club hat like that's something you want to foster.
Like you want to have pride in your club team to wear in your colors, everybody dressing
the same cheering and like have that college feel.
And you know, there's a I can look back on all of my history, both as a club swimmer,
I'm able to remember when we won a sectional meet my senior year of high school.
That felt like like it ended up in college.
There's a couple of moments with Barrington and the Sandpipers that we really came together
as a group and then had that.
But overall, especially day to day, that's really hard to foster.
I think there's only a handful of probably not even full clubs, but just like training
groups in the country.
They're able to do that and do it really well and do it 24 seven.
The me me me part is a little bit inevitable and really hard to to break.
You know, coming into college here, specifically speaking about Pittsburgh, I have not had
a challenge with that as much.
You know, that speaks to the type of people we want to bring it and it speaks to the recruiting
that happened before I got here and the recruiting that we're currently doing, where we try to
weed out those people that are about me, me, me and asking questions, getting to know them,
talking to their parents, talking to club coaches and having them on the visit where
a lot of times that's going to show itself in some shape or form.
So overall, I think our team is really team focused.
I can't really think of anything specific where it was like, OK, freshmen, there's always
growing up, there's always development, there's there's a big, big gap that changes in there.
Just everything being so new.
I spoke to I spoke to a lot of freshmen about that because I've been able to remember my
own experience, like how much just easier quote sophomore year was in freshman year,
just knowing what to expect every single day and knowing what the season was going to look
like, bouncing school, being on your own, et cetera.
So just that adjustment that happens.
But the peer team, I think the our team loves being a part of this university.
They know that we're part of it.
I think they've really sort of realized that we have a pretty special staff that work really
well together, enjoy being at practice every single day and enjoy helping them reach their
goals.
And so the kids realize that and the me, me, me part, it doesn't doesn't come to the surface
and I don't think it exists.
Yeah, nice.
So since you just came from that club world where you were there for, I think, eight seasons,
right?
Eight seasons of Sandpiper's almost exactly eight years.
I mean, you were you were living inside the heads of all those swimmers.
Do you think understanding how those club swimmers, those high school swimmers are thinking, how
they're training it being so fresh helps you with recruiting now that you came into the
college level?
Do you can you can you better identify, you know, these athletes you think will thrive
in in in Pitt system?
Yeah, it certainly doesn't hurt.
I think just purely talk about like the X's and O's and what to expect out of them.
My relationship with the west side of the United States, I was really fortunate to be
really involved in a lot of different areas.
I got to know a ton of people and coaches and programs and make some really good friends.
And so just like their own programs, it helps definitely have a good idea.
Honestly, it's like the best part to be able to be like up on the phone and talk to them
and then be like, hey, like so coach so and so, like, is he still, you know, wearing this
hat or is he talking about this or whatever?
Like, you know, my coach.
Yeah, I know your coach.
I know your coach a lot better than you think.
Like, you know, I've gotten to hang out with him well beyond your other time with you.
And like it's that part of it's really nice.
You know, that background part, too, and that's certainly that's, you know, we talked about
challenges earlier and I know we're going to talk about developing swimmers like knowing
where they're coming from is helpful in our training and calling these coaches and making
time to make that a priority.
I was one of my huge, huge pet peeves of college coaches was where they were never calling
me.
You know, I don't know.
It wasn't because my name was Ron Aiken.
He wasn't getting called very often either.
And it was just like I understand the time aspect of it.
Believe me, like sitting on this side of I get it.
But like, you know, sending somebody that I've coached with for four coach four years,
but more time with he or she than their family did.
And like just going to hand them over and not just, OK, we got this.
We can work them into this.
No problem.
That that part just hurts me.
So that's something I've been really trying to do is is contact these club coaches and
just make that try to learn as much as I can.
Yeah.
You know, and what's wild to me is that that doesn't happen more because in swimming you
can get to those times like a million different ways.
You know, you can.
And you know, we talk about the extremes of, you know, US RPT, you know, US, you know,
ultra short race based training to old school.
You know, we're going to swim 11000 yards a day, you know, and then there's everything
in between.
We talk about aerobic foundations.
There's so much cool stuff.
And then, you know, in terms of the science of swimming, why do college coaches not try
to go back to the source of how they got there?
Because because that's your starting point.
You're going to bring them into your system.
I don't get it.
I don't understand why the background hasn't been more important.
You're going to get me fired up here, man.
There's just there's so many swimmers.
There are not so many.
There's a handful of swimmers.
I look back on that.
I'm just like they just stayed or made a phone call or just done something different like
this person would have swam past their freshman year.
And instead, that then looks bad on us as a club, like all these people aren't coachable
or whatever, like all that.
It's rough.
You know, I don't it makes all the sense in the world.
I think it's I mostly think it's time to be totally honest, like we all coaches, all levels.
That's the commonality between club, college, everything.
We're all grinding and making the time to make that extra phone call, I think, can be
can be hard.
I also think there's a bit of arrogance in there.
Like, sorry, fellow college colleagues.
I just think that they oh, I know better than these club coaches, so I can take care of
this.
I can fit this this round peg into the square hole.
No problem.
I think it fits into our mold and that's yeah.
Well, I think we'll leave that there.
Yeah.
I think it contributes to the fact that one of six freshman college swimmers don't swim
again.
That's what that is.
Yeah, dude.
I believe I know it, but that hurts.
Yeah.
And it seems like there's a lot of there's a lot of those that maybe wouldn't have fallen
off that track had they had the right path through the recruiting process, right path
through the recruiting process, right program.
And let's not let's I got to call it now.
We've got to say both sides here.
Swimmers are always perfect.
Like, of course, like there's always issues there.
And you know, it's it speaks to our sport a little bit.
I say this to a lot of people, especially when they're getting into their junior and
senior year.
And sometimes it just gets really hard to keep grinding and keep pushing and having
that desire to bust your butt and coming back and especially in college.
You get a lot of the same set, same messaging.
It's hard.
And I tell everybody, like swimming for four years in college is is really challenging
and finishing it is something to be very proud of, no matter what level, no matter what your
times are dropped at.
It doesn't matter.
Like it is something to be really proud of.
And what the what you gained was as far as relationships, connections, learned about
yourself through that whole thing.
It's just invaluable, like it's hard to do.
It will change your life.
You know, the NCAA athlete, be a college athlete for four years.
It is a remarkable achievement that will change your life.
And if you're on the fence about it, do it.
And that's that's what's really that's one of the biggest sort of tragedies around all
of the roster cuts that are being forced to happen.
You know, you have kids are having to make this choice right now.
Do I do I transfer and keep swimming?
But I really like my school, you know, and it's hard.
It really is hard.
I always my advice is always, you know, try it.
Try to stay in athletics for four years if you possibly can.
But every every circumstance is unique and it's just a really bad situation.
And just this year, probably more than anything.
Brutal.
So that's I'm sure, you know, you're working with these people like those those programs
are making those choices right now.
And it's out and the panic is happening and it's it's it's heartbreaking.
And you know, you're absolutely right.
It's a weighing of your options.
Like I've talked to someone recently who has 22 credits left to go to graduate at a really
good university.
He's like, like, is this going to transfer?
I don't know.
Like, is this even worth it?
And I was just I leveled it.
I was like, dude, to be honest with you, you got to think about what's best for the rest
of your life.
You know, throughout grad school and different things like that.
But that's the type of position so many people are being put in.
And like these seniors, everything getting upturned.
It's really hard out there.
And people got to be open to looking at places they never would have considered.
And there's there's ways to do it.
And that's going to be my advice to anybody that comes to me or former athletes that are
in this situation.
You got to have an open mind.
Yep.
Well, you know, being an athlete, you're going to get punched in the mouth metaphorically
a lot in a variety of ways.
This is yet another challenge that they're going through and how they handle it is going
to say a lot about, you know, maybe the path they're on through their, you know, post college
careers as well.
So it's a it's a it's a hard challenge.
It's hard.
My heart goes out to them.
It stinks.
But, you know, I don't know.
It's going to be fascinating to see the amount that transfer versus stay.
It's I have no idea.
You know, the ones we're talking to, it's it's like a 50 50 split.
I don't know how it's going to go.
So it's also new.
And then the whatever this is going to look like when the portals open and in the next
week or two weeks, men, women or women, men and it's going to it's the wild, wild west.
I like you asked me like people in the very beginning, like jumping from club to college.
So many people have asked me, why would you do this now?
Like this is an all time bad time to potentially be doing this.
Well, it's chaos, right?
I mean, you know, I think I have embraced the chaos, right?
To me, chaos is is change changes opportunity.
There's an opportunity there to, you know, to to maybe accomplish some things that otherwise
weren't possible through the chaos.
I don't know what that looks like in your position, but we'll see.
I'm new to this, too.
You know, following our lead from from Chase and Gideon and Keras, we have more college
experience than I do.
But we're going to just take it day by day.
Pit to speak on pit like we're in a fortunate situation where we're not going to have to
make any cuts with our graduating seniors and fifth years.
We're going to be under our 30 and 30 men and women numbers.
And so we're fortunate to be in that position.
I'm grateful the ACC didn't take it to another level.
Yeah.
Well, in some ways, it levels the playing field a little bit.
You know, we we've had definitely we've had some coaches talk about having larger rosters
for you can you know, you have more room for development.
You know, if you have your 40, 42 men on a team, you know, you're going to you're going
to try to find those 18.
Well, you don't have that luxury anymore.
Right.
That that pool is going down.
So in some ways, you do get more of a level playing field in that regard.
The scholarship situation is going to be wild because I think it was announced Texas will
do full rides across the board to 22, 22 full scholarships for the men.
That's an interesting challenge.
Right.
Because ultimately that, you know, money talks a lot.
So everything's just shifting.
It's going to be different.
It'll be it'll be it'll be really interesting to see how recruiting plays out with the change.
It will be different.
And then it'll be different from that different because it's just constantly changing.
Yep.
Absolutely.
100 percent.
OK, so let's talk about development.
All right.
So statistically, you know, you came from high school club swimming, right?
It's easier to get bigger time drops out of those younger athletes than it is college
swimmers.
But that is especially true statistically for distance swimmers, which I know you all
had a ton of success in at Sandpiper.
So how you know, how are you approaching trying to replicate that development success that
you've seen in the first part of your career at Pitt?
You know, I think it goes beyond just the distance kids.
But again, it's it's knowing the athlete's background, clubs, training, et cetera, et
cetera.
It's having a plan for our season, both for competitions, training, strength and conditioning,
having a plan and knowing targets we want to hit, things we need to do.
A lot of it, I think development is we can continue through technique.
You know, a lot of kids will still come in raw.
They're still growing their bodies.
And so we like to have a lot of video workout and be able to help athletes become more efficient
and fix technical stuff.
I think a big thing for us is underwaters.
We really we coach the crap out of them doing focusing on that every day in some shape or
form, but specifically once or twice a week.
And it's something that we're also looking for and talking about while we're recruiting,
talking to athletes about their kick counts and what they're doing in their races and
then sometimes holding to it when they tell me they're going to do something and I go
and watch them race and they don't do that.
So it's definitely something that we don't want to be teaching from the from square one
coming in.
So that's specific.
All in all, general, we have to be better coaches than not as better as the wrong word.
We have to be able to take what their coaches previously had been doing with them and do
better.
And so I think that comes from our groups, our staff's collaboration, planning.
We're really individualized, especially as the season goes on, almost painstakingly.
We're every day we're talking about basically every single person in the workout and what
they might be doing differently.
And it takes a lot of time.
It's very challenging, but it really pays off.
And I think that's another way where we can have a continued development that they had
in from high school to college and is in that special specialization for that athlete within
a workout, within their stroke groups, whatever they're doing.
And the other way to I think it's just education.
A lot of times athletes really struggle with the lifestyle changes.
They can't control growth, bodies, genetics.
And so just trying to help athletes with their rest, their recovery, making hopefully making
more recovery options available than they had previously.
Working with our nutritionists, just giving them any reoption we can to continue to improve.
Do you think you have better resources to help your athletes get over those walls, those
blocks that they hit in season, even across multiple seasons?
Do you think you have better resources at Pitt than you had at the club level?
I'm sure you have a ton of resources at Sandpipers, probably a lot more than a lot of clubs.
But you think you're better equipped now to help with that, even though I know it gets
harder when they get into college.
But you have more resources, I would assume.
We have more resources.
We had the difference.
I mean, I think we generally speaking, we I think we have a tremendous amount of those
resources than most other clubs.
I know for a fact that we can all name those clubs that are really getting the job done
at a very high level consistently.
They're finding ways to have those resources for their athletes and Sandpipers included
in everything I pretty much named.
Difference being in the convenience and availability.
You don't have to go across town to go over here and get your massage.
You don't have to do this over here, spend this extra money and all these other things.
But on the club versus college, we have it all right here.
Massage signups come out weekly.
Face baths right there on deck.
Access to nutritionist trainer.
Any of those things all readily available and needs to be taken advantage of by the
athletes.
I think that's probably one of the more common things that we're saying to our swimmers
and divers.
It's like, hey, well, have you gone and seen the trainer?
Have you been doing this?
Have you been taking advantage of this?
Well, no, I just didn't.
A lot of it, they just didn't know that that's really something they should do or try.
And it's just encouraging them to take those next steps.
And so I'd say that we are better equipped, yes, to be able to accommodate 60 people.
What about the sports psychology?
Just the mental part.
That's something that we don't see a ton of in the club side that I'm seeing a lot more
of it on the college side.
What are your thoughts there?
That's a great question.
It's something honestly, like post championship meets so far, that's probably been my most
frequent conversation is diving into that.
Where both athlete and our coaching staff believe that we pretty much did everything
right and that there's just something that didn't click when it was time to just really
race and helping them work through that.
And so we have a University of Pittsburgh has a sports psychiatrist, sports psychologist,
excuse me, on call and actually a good number of our athletes take advantage of it.
I think it's been really good and gotten great feedback from that.
And there are other sources out there through the swimming world and different people that
have come across.
I know of other people that specialize in that for athletes.
And I think it's just incredibly important, especially we were talking about earlier freshmen
the adjustments and changing things and how challenging it can be.
Just having someone to help keep your thoughts organized and continue to instill confidence
in you is really important.
I think the mental game is underestimated.
I think the connection between how you approach that race mentally is just as important as
how you approach it physically.
You may have the best taper in the world, but if your anxiety is off the charts, it's
not going to translate, not to that best performance.
But I think that maybe there's some of that in that one of six don't continue on past
their freshman year.
It's a big, huge change.
It's happening.
This is why people that hire graduates and you're getting resumes across your desk, you
love athletes because they've had to persevere through, they've moved.
They've got all of these academic challenges.
They don't have somebody living with them that's holding them accountable on a day to
day basis.
I guess you kind of hold them accountable.
As parents, we pass them off to our coaches.
And so to get through all of that is tough.
But it's also taxing mentally.
And I think that's that mental game.
It's just not a thing with most clubs.
It's really not.
I think clubs, they have so many kids in the lane.
They have lack of resources, but in the college level, it seems that there's more colleges
addressing that because of just more of a college level focus on just mental health.
I think it's just it's everywhere too.
You hear about it all the time, whether you watch the sports on TV, the Olympics, like
there, there, it's just so much mental health period is just so much more at the forefront
of everyone's thinking now.
Yes.
And that's what's always so impressive about the biggest of the biggest events when you
watch them on the Olympics at the Olympics, you know, when they're at finals, you know,
everything had to go right to get there.
And they had to stay mentally sharp the whole time.
And that's what's just incredibly impressive about that.
And it's no different than the ones that made finals at ACC.
Everything had to go well to get to that point.
So, right.
OK, so so let's talk about dual meets for a second.
So you know, you have you spent eight seasons at these huge club meets.
They're multi-day battles.
You know, you swimmers are swimming a ton of events in college.
Now in season, you've got these quick, intense, team focused dual meets completely different.
I ask this question a lot.
Do you like the setup?
Do you think it's outdated?
What are your thoughts now doing this for a season?
I knew this was coming to and I enjoyed listening to everybody else's responses because they
were way more insightful than mine's going to be.
I'm still figuring it out.
I think in general, my most important thing, we go back to go back to planning.
And so we're setting up our season.
We know our target.
We know where ACC or NCAA is, whatever that is for that group.
Like that's where we want to be.
So we work backwards with our training and our setup.
And so my challenge that I don't know if we can do if we did it right or not.
I have no opinion of this past year.
That's something that I've already been talking with Chase about a little bit and just trying
to understand, like, all right, how do we make these dual meets fit into our training
and where how many times we want to race, where do we need them?
And in January here, Pitt, we had three dual meets, three out of the five weekends that
were in January, we were swimming.
And when I'm going into it, like middle of December, I realized most of the time when
I was really I was I was not excited about it.
I was like, this is not going to be so hard training.
This is going to be so hard for our routine, everything.
But we with our planning again, and I don't know if we chose them or how that got set
up.
I don't know if we chose this, but it ended up working really well for us.
We talked about the very beginning of the year, like we want to try to descend from
meet to meet to meet and get better as we went.
And we worked into our training.
Athletes responded to it really well.
And I thought it set us up with the racing really well for February.
You know, I don't like racing all the time.
I kind of like in club or whatever this happened.
This is going to happen in college coming up.
We just put our head down for two months.
But what I've learned is that's really hard for.
So there's a handful.
I think it's probably the minority of athletes are good.
It can just are OK with just grinding.
But the majority of them need a little carrot out there.
They need a measuring stick.
They need to see where they're at.
They need to change up.
So like having that meat every four to six weeks, I think it's the sweet spot.
And certainly don't miss the three and a half day crazy craziness of club meets.
But I mean, our dual meets end up being an all day affair, too.
By the time we do team breakfast, getting everything set up.
And it's a lot no matter what.
Swimming is just a lot no matter what level you're at.
Especially if you travel, right?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
Yeah.
Yes.
And travel and fatigue, sickness, all that comes with it.
So answer to you is I'm not sure what I would change.
Do I want more energy and hype at it?
Absolutely.
Do I support Kyle Sockwell and everything that they're trying to do with all those things?
Of course, fired up.
I love it.
We had a really fun dual meet where we had our alumni night, senior night.
There's really great energy in the stands.
That was when we swam against who did we host?
George Washington, West Virginia.
That was really fun.
Even against Ohio State.
Some competitive races in there.
Obviously a really good team, team we respect.
And that was really fun to just have a home meet at Trees and see our beautiful pool on
display.
So learning.
I like the invites.
I really liked what the Akron coach said, Brian said about doing that.
I thought that was definitely different and a cool way of thinking about it.
Again, just going back to it, the needs to just we have to work them into our training
and make them fit and and not be a hindrance.
Yeah.
So dual meets are kind of a shock for the high school athletes that go into college.
But I was talking to one of our athletes that we've helped and she was talking about conference.
That's our first conference ever.
And she she said, oh, my God, that was fun.
She's just like, she said, this was the greatest meet I have ever been at.
I had no idea conference was this fun.
I was like, well, how did it compare to state or whatever?
And she said 10x better.
She said just just electric.
And and I think that's something that a lot of the athletes don't realize is how fun it
is to get a chance to be at conference, especially, you know, you're competitive, you're getting
into those those relays.
The the crowds there.
It's loud.
But tell me about ACC.
What was that atmosphere like at ACC and how does that stack up to some of those?
Because you were you were at some of the huge USA swimming meets.
Right.
So tell me tell me the comparison.
I'm a bad person to talk about this.
I I don't know if it's I'm just like I'm not a negative Nancy type person or just like
jaded.
But like it was it was great.
Like it was obviously it was fun.
Kids were swimming well.
Good energy.
I mean, was it like the most crazy swim meet I've ever been into my entire life?
Absolutely not.
No, not at all.
But like was it just another swim meet?
No.
Anytime where I could see athletes who work their tail off day in and day out, week in
and week out since October achieve their goals and swim better than they thought they were
going to and a team come together.
That's a great meet.
And I loved every second of that.
I don't know.
Like I'm really bad person for that.
Like watching other people swim fast doesn't usually get me too riled up like watching
American records and stuff.
I just I want to be my kids.
So like when I'm watching other people do it, it's like, oh, OK, cool.
New bar to go try to go reach.
All right.
I guess it takes a lot to really like, wow, wow me in that sense.
Sorry.
No, no, it's OK.
You'll be you'll be at NCAA in a couple of weeks.
Right.
So really excited.
I'm truly really excited about that.
I've never been NCAA swimmer spectator coach, obviously.
So that one will be fun.
I'm excited for that energy.
Like eight CCCs was great.
We had 15 teams there, fastest swimmers in the world.
Pit was doing awesome.
Like it was really fun.
But no, was it the craziest swim meet ever?
I went to the Olympics as a spectator this summer.
So like that's that's the highest standard now.
That was unbelievable.
That's the problem.
Yeah.
I think the meet that this one I was talking about was that it was extremely close, like
down to the last.
Oh, that's that's so that you know, you had you had it live streamed, you had commentators,
you have play by play, you had nervous energy.
It was pretty wild.
That's what I've been a part of those the swimmer, been a part of those as coach.
We won one of our conference championship meets in college by like 10 points.
I remember like I, I swam in Illinois before they had the fancy auditorium there.
So the high school state meet at Evanston in Nutria was in Sports Illustrated.
You know, like to see that like the hundreds of people they packed in this tiny six lane
pool like that energy and like is really not comparable to most other places because if
the fire has or nobody wants to swim in a pool like that.
But that was a really cool thing to get to experience as a swimmer and a coach.
Yeah.
What about the new additions to the ACC that that was very highly anticipated was made
for a heck of a fast meet, didn't it?
It sure did.
ACCs are insanely fun to watch.
And you know, we you and I were talking about this before we we started recording.
But SECs and ACCs both just wild, just wild.
So you know, conference realignment is really hard.
Personally, I hate it because I have to change all of our database stuff.
But you know, just from that's just that's a me problem.
But I really wasn't sure what to expect with how much it was going to change the times
it took to make B finals and A finals.
And when you're doing the analysis, it's about a one percent faster meet now to make those
cut lines.
That is a ton.
Yeah, I thought it was more.
Wow.
One percent one percent per power four.
We haven't seen this jump.
I've never seen that as far back as I've gone.
I've not seen this jump.
That is huge.
Yeah, huge jump.
So, you know, SEC just bringing in Texas changed everything with their cut times.
Wow.
No, it is.
Conferry alignment has made things very competitive to score points at.
I think it's been a little bit it's it's so fast.
Power fours have gotten even scarier to try to scare is the right word.
It's gotten more elusive for swimmers to think, can I swim at power four now?
Right.
You know, when you see when you see those time drops on that B final or just that C
final being that fast now, so many athletes are like, am I ever going to get there?
And when you see the roster cuts, it's like, oh, now there's fewer, you know, fewer roster
spots.
So the those those four conferences are getting very difficult to swim at.
So when you have someone swimming at that conference, that is that is one hell of an
accomplishment right now.
Yeah, it was.
And it was definitely startling to see some of those C final times, what it takes to make
it back.
Like that was that was a lot.
You know, but our our athletes, they were prepared for it.
We we intentionally went to our midseason meet.
We went to the Texas Hall of Fame invite.
So we saw Texas, we saw Stanford, we saw USC, we saw Wisconsin, BYU.
I think I'm missing one other team that was there.
But like we were prepared for that.
And having seen that and we knew we had to get the job done in the morning.
And that is the message that has been preached since day one.
And for the most part, we did a really good job of swimming fast and prelims and taking
care of business.
And I's and right now it goes to the saying to the other side of this coin that you were
just outlining, like a high tide rises, raises all boats.
Right.
And everyone's going to get better.
You set a set a bar.
People are always going to go get it.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
What about what are your thoughts on NIL?
Name image likeness.
Like, do you think you're you're in the middle of it?
You're powerful.
Right.
What what do you think it's it's really going to play much of a role in college swimming?
I'm still learning.
So I guilty of listening to way too much sports talk radio.
So very, very well versed in NIL and its effects on football and basketball.
You know, it's.
I think there's we've kind of classic NCAA or just kind of what happens in life.
Like we're so far on one side of the spectrum for so long.
And then the pendulum swung way to the other side.
And now conference realignment, all these other trickle down effects.
And at some point, we're going to swing back into the middle and find some middle ground
here.
And there's going to keep him changes kind of till we get there.
No, we're still we're navigating it.
New athletic director brought in that says really is number one mission and not just
take advantage of the great city that Pittsburgh is and awesome businesses and and and assets
that are around here, but figuring out how to help our athletes and stay competitive
with that.
I feel pretty confident saying that I don't think most universities and definitely most
swim teams do not have this down pat.
We're all learning as we go.
How it's going to affect things.
I probably a great question for me in about a month when we have to start recruiting out
of transfer portal.
Yeah, that's the honestly like that's probably where it's going to be like.
So this we're going to find out where who that means something to.
Right.
And hopefully we're ready for those conversations.
But it's it's it's the biggest challenge in that department of our sport right now,
the recruiting stuff and managing and I know that's facts.
Yeah.
And you are you are in the position where it if it's going to have a big effect in the
sport, it's going to affect you because you're in the power for where there's just going
to be more donor money.
There's going to be more collectives.
There's going to be more opportunities and it will be really interesting to see how it
plays out.
And we've talked to a lot of coaches.
We talked to the high end D2, D3, all of mid majors.
It's interesting to hear everyone seems to think that it's going to play a role in their
world.
I don't know how it could.
I just don't know what role that's going to be.
Yeah, right.
Right.
It's funny.
It doesn't take a lot of money to move some of these athletes.
And I think we see that with we're not a not not a lot of colleges are fully funded.
Right.
So just scholarships themselves have played a tremendous role in where those athletes
go.
So it'll be interesting to see just a few thousand dollars could actually change change
the landscape.
We'll see.
Yeah.
That's if it's hopefully it's that simple.
Right.
Yeah.
I mean, and who's going to lead it?
We know Texas and Tennessee.
Right.
I mean, that's two of the ones right there.
They have chosen to be, you know, tip of the spear on that.
So we'll we'll see.
We'll see how that goes.
All right.
So one last question.
I ask this every time.
You know, it's coming.
You've listened before.
So Pits got a ton of great sports, man, like a ton of great sports.
So and you lived all over the country.
So I actually have no idea what other sports swimming you might like.
So what's your favorite sport outside of swimming?
I mean, to watch and take in, I watch football every Sunday from wall to wall every day or
every week.
I love football.
I'm really just a huge sports junkie.
I grew up in the days like what I would call Sports Center.
It's like glory days.
And me and my brothers watching all the time.
And like I said, listen to too much sports talk radio.
And so I love sports and all kinds and taking them all in.
I've been lucky enough in my life.
I've gotten to go to some pretty cool sporting events live and see them at Pitt here.
Like the athletic department over the past five, six years has really done an awesome
job revamping all of our sports at one point in October.
Our football team was ranked 17th.
Our men's soccer was number one in the country and our volleyball was number one in the country.
I was just doing a great job across the board there.
I haven't gotten to go to too many.
My kind of our office backs up to the field house.
So I've just kind of taken in some of the volleyball games.
Our volleyball team is incredible.
Been to a football game and I've been to a basketball game with my dad.
Great arena.
We have great facilities.
Our baseball, softball and soccer complexes are all right behind where we park.
And every night the sun is setting.
You can see the city in the background, skyline, sunset and the sports teams out there.
So, not a Steelers fan yet.
Really want to go to a Steelers game.
Can't wait for that opportunity.
But now unfortunately I'm going to continue to be a Bears fan and stay loyal to my Chicago
sports.
I will not tell you I'm a Packers fan then.
No, I figured.
But you brought up a good point because you talk about Steelers, right?
So Pitt's unique in that you not only have a lot of college sports, that is a major professional
sports town too.
You got the Penguins, you got Steelers.
This is a great sports town in general.
That's another connection that me coming here, me and my love for sports, this is absolutely
a sports town.
People go crazy about their Steelers, their Penguins and we'll find out about the Pirates.
I'm psyched.
Can't wait to go to PNC and see the Cubs play there.
But I know that they are hardcore Pirates fans and they're crazy about their sports
and the support, the sport is visible at the university as well.
It's really cool sports town.
Again, something that really spoke to me and connected well with.
Yeah, it probably does not hurt when you're recruiting either.
So, oh, I mean, our football, those that don't know our college football team plays at where
the Steelers play extra stadium.
So get to go to where full blown NFL stadium and it's it's a really cool atmosphere.
Yes, I have never been to a Pittsburgh sporting event.
I've been to Pittsburgh once, but the the number of people that I'm friends with that
are absolute loyalists for Steelers, Penguins and even Pirates.
Yep.
Crazy.
It's crazy.
Steeler nations everywhere.
Wow.
Terrible travel travels.
It does.
Coach Kinneros, thank you so much for being on.
This was awesome.
Congratulations on making the move to college swimming.
I'm really excited to see how some of these swimmers are going to develop as as as you
take them on.
I can't wait to talk to you again.
I know you're headed to NCAA soon, so good luck with with your summers there.
And again, thank you for the time.
Hey, I really appreciate it, Jamie.
It was fun talking with you and thanks for everything you're doing in advancing sports
analytics and podcasts and just making everybody better.
Thank you so much, man.
I appreciate it, man.
All right.
Hey, Jamie.