How Did You Get Your Start?

As far as college coaches go, I had a pretty abnormal track.

My senior year of college, I was swimming at UNC Wilmington, but was going for a masters in Accounting.

I went to Deloitte, and the plan was to do tax consulting and eventually make partner.

Deloitte was great to me, but I wasn’t waking up every morning loving work. I liked the time before work, when I was exercising, triathlon training, or weightlifting, and I liked after work for happy hour.

My wife was going back to UNC Wilmington for grad school, so we moved there, and I started swimming at the local YMCA. There were triathletes and Masters swimmers there who saw I was a good swimmer, and asked me to coach them once a week.

At some point that year, the head coach of the YMCA’s 18 and under team left and they asked if I’d take over.

Looking back, I can’t believe I did that because I was still working 60-80 hours a week at Deloitte.

A year later, I was telling this same story to the head coach of UNC Wilmington, and he asked me what I really wanted to do. At that moment, it hit me: I wanted to be a college swim coach.

It was the right place and the right time, because his assistant head coach was retiring in a year, and he said if I wanted the position, it was mine to take.

So a year later, I quit my job at Deloitte and jumped straight into college coaching.

I was at UNC Wilmington for 5 years, went to NC State as an Associate Head Coach for 6 years, and then came to UVA.