Wild Speculation: Okay Actually, There Are a Lot of Good Candidates for the Georgia Tech Job

08/15/2024 03:58 PM

By Braden Keith on SwimSwam

In a light-breaking spin of the carousel, the head coaching job at Georgia Tech opened up on Wednesday when long-time head coach Courtney Shealy Hartresigned to pursue a professional opportunity outside of sports.

This is a really interesting job. Georgia Tech has had a number of good swimmers in Hart’s 15 years leading the program. Most of those were international swimmers, and most of them were on the men’s side.

Still, the program as a whole never really moved into a top-15 conversation. The men peaked at 19th in 2019 and the women peaked at 28th in 2021. Recent successes included Caio Pumpitus, a Brazilian who finished 5th in the 200 breaststroke at his last NCAA Championship meet in 2022. The school has become a bit of a pipeline for Brazilian swimmers. Two assistant coaches, Arislon Soares da Silva and the recently-hired Iago Moussalem, are both Brazilian. Another Brazilian Chico Rego was also on the staff until taking over at George Washington this summer.

Outside of that, the program has the benefit of one of the most important pools in the country, the 1996 Olympic pool (reduced from its peak capacity); a world-class academic reputation; and as a public school, an unbelievably-cheap in-state tuition in a state that has a lot of swimming talent. Tuition mattered before for efficient scholarship allocation; moving forward, it could help keep costs down when programs move to a full-scholarship model.

A year of tuition at Georgia Tech costs only $12,000 for in-state students and around $33,000 for out of state students. For comparison’s sake, the University of Michigan, a similarly-positioned academic institution, charges about $18,000 per year for in-state tuition and $61,000 per year in out-of-state tuition.

With academics, facilities, and a rare traditional-campus university located in a large urban setting, the school feels like a potential swimming powerhouse with the right staff and the right momentum.

The question is whether Georgia Tech can find that this late in the game. Most of the hot-name coaches, like Mike Stephens (Stanford), Herbie Behm (Arizona State), Matt Leach (Iowa State), Blaire Bachman (Texas A&M), Caitlin Hamilton (Kentucky), or Ben Loorz (Arizona), who were primed to move into a Power 4 head coaching gig, have already been snapped up.

Still, I think there are a lot of really interesting possibilities here. Namely, this feels like one of the best opportunities in a while for a club coach to make the jump into college coaching.

Besides the fact that a lot of off-season movement has left a lot of experienced assistants without jobs, I think there are current college coaches who might consider this position.

Here’s what I think makes this job really interesting: Atlanta is still relatively affordable, compared to places like Southern California where many pro groups pop up. It’s a big city that offers lots of opportunities for a swimmer like Nic Fink who might want to work while training as a pro swimmer. If the right coach comes into this program, it could be the next great hotbed for pro training.

Atlanta Ties

Rich Murphy, associate head coach, Tennessee – Murphy’s first go-around at college coaching as the head coach at the University of Houston didn’t yield great results, but his seven seasons at Tennessee have been a whole different story. With the way the Tennessee program is structured, Murphy has a lot of latitude within the men’s program, and that men’s program has had a ton of sprint success with guys like Jordan Crooks and Gui Caribe. Murphy made his name in nearly a decade at the Dynamo Swim Club in Atlanta, so there’s a big local connection there. He also spent time working under Bob Bowman as a volunteer at Michigan – having a reference from the coach who led the Arizona State men to the NCAA title last season wouldn’t hurt either.

Michael Norment, associate head coach, Georgia – Norment’s blood is all Bulldog: the former University of Georgia swimmer returned there as an associate head coach last season. But in between, he spent time at Georgia Tech, which saw the men’s program score at four-straight NCAA Championships after not scoring at the two prior to his hire. He also coached Nic Fink, the top American breaststroker of the last 4-5 years, for a time while Fink was pursuing a Master’s degree there. A return from the return seems logical.

Nathan Lavery, Head Coach, Drexel – This one makes a lot of sense. The former Texas A&M swimmer has held a number of assistant coaching jobs around the country, but more recently has settled in as the head coach at Drexel in Philadelphia for four years. A school with a good academic profile in an urban setting, Georgia Tech will feel familiar with him. Also because he spent the 2017-2018 season there as an assistant coach before heading to TCU. The Drexel women were 6th and the men 4th at last year’s CAA Championships, so not a real mid-major superpower, but Lavery is developing a good reputation nationally.

They Might Be Available

Arilson Soares Da Silva, Assistant Coach, Georgia Tech – He hasn’t been at Georgia Tech long, but he did help coach four swimmers to NCAA Championship invites last season. He has a lot of international coaching experience with athletes like Andriy Govorov and Bruno Fratus. If he has a good relationship with admin, this might be a nice setup for a “interim for a year, if it goes well, you can have the job. If not, that gives us a full off-season to look.”

Mitch Dalton, Associate Head Coach, University of Texas – I’m projecting a bit here, but the Texas situation, with Bob Bowman coming in as the superior to the women’s team head coach Carol Capitani, could be a situation that leaves Dalton feeling unsure about his future with the Longhorns and how that program might be structured down the road.

Wyatt Collins, “Special Assistant,” University of Texas – Texas currently lists Collins as a “Special Assistant,” but there’s no indication he’ll be with the Longhorns varsity squad in a full coaching roll going forward. Lots of people have said Collins might leave coaching if he didn’t get the Texas job, and it feels like if he wanted to be a head coach somewhere, he would have had that opportunity somewhere. Still, with the Olympics behind him, maybe he’ll get that itch and slide into this last-minute opportunity.

Joao de Lucca, assistant coach, Notre Dame – The former Louisville swimmer and 200 free NCAA Champion, who kicked off the Cardinals’ run being a consistent top 10 college program, has developed a fast reputation as an apt Paralympic coach. He was hired by another ACC school, Notre Dame, last season, and with recent news about Notre Dame, there are a few assistants out of that program (many, like Trevor Carroll, also with Louisville ties) who could be a good fit. To be clear: the investigations found that the gambling issues at Notre Dame had nothing to do with the coaches and that they were completely unaware of it, basically absolving them. That shouldn’t be too much of a red flag for any of those coaches going forward. Plus, he’s Brazilian. Maybe a bit short on experience still, though.

Dr. Josh White, High Performance Manager, Fitter & Faster Swim Tours – Okay so the Fitter & Faster gig is a real one, a good one, and an opportunity to impact a ton of swimmers nationally. But White built his personal brand as the University of Michigan’s distance coach working with swimmers like Connor Jaeger and Sean Ryan. It felt like he was a hot name for a minute and kind of missed his window to grab a big-time head coaching job before things got weird at the end of the Mike Bottom era at Michigan. Still, White has a good resume and, if he wants to get back into college coaching, would be a big name for Georgia Tech.

The Women!

Hart has long been a torch-bearer for women who are Power 4 head coaches of a combined-gender program, and while women are getting more and more opportunities, that is still not-insignificant. Here are a few of the top female names if the school decides to continue that tradition.

Ashley Jahn OR Sarah Collins, Associate Head Coaches, Tennessee – Ashley Jahn has been with the women’s program at Tennessee for 12 years, including the last six as associate head coach, so she has seen all of the successes and SEC titles and All-America honors (437!) and Olympians that the Volunteers have produced in that time. Collins, meanwhile, has spent one season as a volunteer assistant and the last two in a full-time capacity. She also spent time with the Cal women during the height of that program and at Pitt, Kentucky, and Illinois State. While there’s no obvious ties to Georgia or Atlanta, Tennessee and Georgia Tech are essentially in the same geographic recruiting footprint, and both coaches have a lot of experience.

Kate Moore, Assistant Coach, Duke – Moore spent last season as an assistant coach at Duke, another ACC program that had a great first season under new head coach Brian Barnes. She had previous stops at Washington State, when the school had its first Pac-12 Champion in program history, and East Carolina. Her swimmers rave about her coaching. It feels like the right time to start putting her name into these conversations, and the ACC connection gives her a leg up here. She’s been around success everywhere she’s been and has a strong reputation.

Kristen Murslack, Assistant Coach, Florida – The former Auburn swimmer has spent four seasons at Florida, one of the best programs in the country, working mostly with the women’s team. The Gator swimmers have won the last two SEC team titles. Prior to that she spent time at Pitt working with the middle distance swimmers. It feels maybe a year or two early for her to take over a Power 4 program, but she’s on that track and is another coach with regional and ACC ties.

Hear Me Out

Ron Aitken, Head Coach, Sandpipers of Nevada – I don’t think that it’s a secret that Aitken, one of the most successful club coaches in the country, wants to get into college coaching at some point. He has also expressed a desire to build a pro group in parallel with that. A strong college program in a major metro (that’s really affordable compared to, say, Southern California, where many pro groups pop up) seems like a setup that could facilitate both of those things.

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