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UVA Women’s Swim team brought home their 6th consecutive NCAA Swimming & Diving Championship on March 21st, as well as the Coach of the Year Award.
Given this accomplishment, I thought I’d share my interview with Todd DeSorbo, UVA Men & Women’s Head Swim Coach, and 2024 Head Coach for the U.S. Women’s Olympics Swim Team.
The Rundown:
COLD OPEN: Accounting → Olympic Coach
TURNING POINT: Running through brick walls, again and again
REDEFINED: How NIL and the NCAA’s changing climate affect coaches New!
INDUSTRY INSIDER: Working more as a coach than during 60-80 hour weeks at Deloitte
IF I WERE YOU: If you’re taking out the trash, be the best at it
COLD OPEN
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.
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TURNING POINT
What’s A Challenge You Faced Early On?
How do you motivate people to run through a wall, because that’s what I’m asking our swimmers to do. Run through a brick wall, get up, do it again, get up, do it again.
Getting people excited about that is a challenge. I enjoy challenges, though.
Coaching at UNC Wilmington was probably the best first coaching job I could've had, because it's a mid-major, not a Power 5 conference or university, so there were very few athletic scholarships there.
The swimmers there had other priorities, and they weren't bound by scholarships, so motivating them was a real challenge to start with, but it gave me a great foundation.
REDEFINED
How Has Your Role Evolved?
It feels like I’m more of a CEO now than a swim coach.
A lot of it’s due to the changing climate of the NCAA. With NIL and revenue sharing, head coaches in every college sport have become more like general managers.
Take Luka’s trade, for example. When he was traded from Dallas to LA this past summer, the Mavericks’ head coach didn’t even know it was happening — the GM handled it, and Luka was gone.
For us, it’s different. If I’ve got a trade happening, I’m the one making the decision and coaching that athlete.
I’m still on the deck, writing practices, and coming up with revolutionary training ideas, but I'm also now fundraising and dealing with professional athletes.
When I go to the Olympics, I’m not coaching at all — I’m managing, 100%.
And the better our kids get, the more we manage than coach.
It’s a new challenge, but a good one.
INDUSTRY INSIDER
What Do People Misunderstand About High-Level Coaching?
Our sport in particular is a grind, and sometimes it feels for the swimmers that our high standards are done to them, when we’re really doing it for them.
Some people think this is easy — but if you want to be great, it's hard work.
Not just for the athletes, but for the coaches. It’s taken endless hours to build this program and keep it at this caliber.
Funny enough, I work more now than I ever did at Deloitte.
IF I WERE YOU
Do You Have Any Advice For Students?
No matter what you do, be the best at it. Your first job may not be your entire career, but the better you do at it, the better the next job’s going to be.
Even if you’re taking out the trash, be the best at it.
CLOSING TIME
What To Do Next
Reading is great — but putting yourself out there, meeting new people, and finding opportunities is what this is all about.
4 things to do right now:
Find a UVA alum and send them a cold message.
Follow up in a week if they don’t respond.
Prepare for the meeting, and talk to them
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