S&D teams just finished 6th (M) and 5th (W)...in the SEC

Yep.

Fire Allen Greene!!!


Sorry someone had to start it

Meh. We traded pretending to care about swimming for pretending to care about softball. So it is a wash.

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I was good friends with one of our female divers and in private she was pretty obviously disillusioned with our coaching staff I think a change needs to be made.

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I wonder why they are disillusioned?

I noticed that Hawke won 3 more Men's SEC Champ after Marsh left and Quick died, but none over the last 6 years. And NO women's championships sine Marsh left.
Is it poor recruiting or a combo of that and coaching them?

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Is it poor recruiting or a combo of that and coaching them?

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Both. With Marsh we had the perfect combination of someone who could recruit the best in the world as well as coach them up to his/her full potential. We saw both highly touted swimmers come from foreign countries and dominate as well as local guys from Georgia and Alabama develop into Olympians.

Marsh also was effective at surrounding himself with the best assistants (this is important with swimming) to the point where Marsh was rarely even seen on the pool deck during practices in his final couple years. Coach Hawke has struggled to a) bring on quality assistant coaches and b) get them to stay here for more than 2-3 years. A few of Marsh's assistants have even gone on to become head coaches else where, the best example being Dave Durden who has won titles at Cal.

Our facilities have begun to hurt our recruiting (Marsh got James Martin built and subsequently our dynasty began, but it hasn't seen much of any upgrades since) as well as our program's inability to showcase any recent swimmer's who have had success after college.

Edit: The three SEC championships we won with Coach Hawke at the helm were mostly done with talent from Quick and Marsh.

I swam competitively from when I was 8 until end of my sophomore year in high school. I was good enough to get offered small amount of scholly money to low tier D1 schools, but gave it up to focus on running instead....which ended up being a wise move. Hell, my dream growing up was to swim at AU (this was when they were putrid), but this was mercifully ended when Marsh did his thing.

I say this to brag a bit and to explain the biggest reasons we suck now.

1. Hope scholarship/Tops, etc. Like baseball, this has killed the schools that don't have lottery money freed up
2. The NCAA changed the rules regarding foreign athetes. At the moment, I can't remember what it exactly says, but it has been the biggest negative impact on our program. Getting world class foreign swimmers in was our bread and butter and why we were so dominant under Marsh. With that done now, we have slipped back to our pre-Marsh shitty days.

You talk to a lot of people around the program and they will tell you that under the current rules, not much would change even if Marsh did come back (which is one of many reasons he would never come back anyway.)

Since I was an AU athlete at the same time our swim team was world class, I ended up friends with a few swimmers and occasionally talk today. Their program outlook is depressing! I really don't think dumping money into facilities would be the best move at this point.

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1. Hope scholarship/Tops, etc. Like baseball, this has killed the schools that don't have lottery money freed up
2. The NCAA changed the rules regarding foreign athetes. At the moment, I can't remember what it exactly says, but it has been the biggest negative impact on our program. Getting world class foreign swimmers in was our bread and butter and why we were so dominant under Marsh. With that done now, we have slipped back to our pre-Marsh shitty days.

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Uh oh, watch out... incoming. (Facts are always infuriating to those who live inside their fact-free bubbles.)

(P.S. As to point #2 above, I think what they changed were the RECRUITING rules regarding foreign athletes. And those changes basically blew Marsh's overseas recruiting program to pieces.)

Nope, Marsh left Charlotte to be head swim coach at the University of California - San Diego.

https://www.charlotteobserver.com/sports/spt-columns-blogs/scott-fowler/article158386149.html

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After parting ways with SwimMAC Carolina in May, well-known swim coach David Marsh has accepted a new job as head swim coach at the University of California at San Diego.

“It’s a great opportunity,” Marsh said Tuesday in a phone interview. “Our family will continue to keep a home in Charlotte -- we still have two children going to college in North Carolina -- but I’m excited about all that the UCSD program has to offer.”

Marsh, 59, was the highest-profile coach SwimMAC Carolina ever employed. Starting in 2007, he worked at the Charlotte club for a decade while achieving unprecedented success for the area in terms of sheer numbers of Olympic swimmers produced. In 2016, SwimMAC’s Team Elite placed a record six American swimmers into the 2016 Olympics in Rio, and Marsh himself was named head coach of the U.S. women’s Olympic swim team.

However, the relationship between Marsh and SwimMAC soured over the past few years over reasons that have not been fully disclosed. The two agreed to separate mutually -- and immediately -- in May and issued a vague joint statement.

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Please note that Jay Jacobs has been nowhere near nor has he participated in SwimMAC Carolina.

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UC at San Diego is a Division II swimming program and is mostly populated with non-scholarship swimmers. While it generally competes well at the Division II level -- the men finished 19th in the NCAA Division II championships last year and the women were 16th.

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