University of Tennessee Athletics
The Greatest Team Story Ever Told
October 13, 2014 | Swimming & Diving
Three dual meets into the 2014-15 season and Tennessee men's and women's swim teams both share identical 2-1 records.
Sure, road wins at UNC Wilmington in September and at Queens (NC) this past Thursday bode well for the early records and, sure, even a competitive loss at North Carolina Friday serves the team in the long run, but as the Vols know after constant training and practice, there is a long way to go until the SEC Championships and NCAAs in March.
With a pair of top-15 finishes at NCAAs last season, momentum is catapulting UT into this season. No one knows that more than the coaching staff, led by Head Coach Matt Kredich and company.
"Coming off the previous year, you can either choose to take the momentum one direction or another," said Kredich. "We had some really great performances under pressure from people like Troy Tillman and Tristan Slater. To me, those performances provide a lot of momentum coming into this year because those guys are leaders on the team. They essentially came of age in a really high-pressure situation. They know what it takes to be successful at this meet."
Coming off of two fifth-place finishes, the men continued their upward ascent in the NCAA rankings, finishing 15th in 2014 after a 16th place finish in 2013 and a 22nd place finish in 2012. While the solid senior leadership and some of the top finishers are no longer in Knoxville, a new batch of leaders, including seniors Tillman, Slater, Jacob Thulin and Ryan McFall, aim to steer the Vols back to similar, if not better, glory this time around in Iowa City, Iowa.
"It's kind of like having a senior point guard on a basketball team. If you have an elite sprinter as a senior leader, then you have some really powerful leadership. Then you look at our freshman class, who are both talented and really driven, and we feel like we have one of the best teams we've had here in years. We look at NCAA championships and we feel like we can big impact at that meet."
That freshmen class certainly has made an impact so far, winning 11 individual races already in the first three dual meets of the season. The seven first-year swimmers (Ryan Coetzee, David Heron, Duncan Johnson, Sam McHugh, Evan Pinion, Joshua Romany and Peter John Stevens) bring not just an extreme amount of potential for great results, but also provides quite the international flare. Domestically, this class stretches from Maryland (Johnson) to California (Heron) to right in UT's backyard in both Chattanooga (McHugh) and Knoxville (Pinion), but the other three hail from as far out as Trinidad and Tobago (Romany), Slovenia (Stevens) and South Africa (Coetzee).
"The men has to be one of the best classes in the country when you insert David and Evan," said Kredich. "Having redshirted last year, both of them have experience with Team USA. Sam McHugh is one of the most versatile and dangerous freshmen in the NCAA. Ryan and Peter have both excelled at World Championships (Peter is a gold medalist). Josh would be on our USA junior national team if he was an American citizen. We never really get to know the freshmen until they get onto campus, but this crew has bought into the culture. They're driving the culture forward. I just feel really good about where they are right now."
Not to be overlooked by the men by any means is the massive amount of success that the Lady Vols have had since the program combined in 2012. Tennessee's women are seeking their fourth-straight top-10 finish at the NCAA championships in what is Kredich's tenth overall season as head coach of the women. Similar to the men, a lot of highly-talented senior leadership has departed Knoxville (Gendron, Lamp, Solernou, Sanderson, McNeilis.....the list goes on and on), but the amount of depth in the sophomore and junior classes help keep the Orange and White in contention once again.
"We can look at those guys leaving and think `what are we going to do?', but we have a tremendously deep and powerful junior class," said Kredich. "We have what I think is the most explosive breaststroker in the nation in Molly Hannis. Cherelle Thompson has become an elite swimmer in NCAA and then we have an entire sophomore class that never really fired on all cylinders and now, they're showing they have some real drive. Erin Gaeckle is out other senior and I can see her score at NCAAs.
"When you look at this team, you look at the power of the personalities and essentially the drive and motivation that is contained in the team and then we look at where you can grow and I see some really exciting possibilities."
Throw into mix another tight group of freshmen--Alex Cleveland, Micah Bohon, Taylor Lehr, Logan Haddock, Amy Lubawy--and the women have another great chance to cause some ripples in the SEC pool....just another layer that this team has which, when put together, can form quite a dangerous squad for opposing teams to face come January, February and March.
"At the end of the season, where I think we can be, this is going to be one of the best team stories that is ever been to be able to be told at Tennessee," said Kredich. "We have a lot of people, because they've been there or have been really close, who can see really clearly how to be really successful at the end of the season. Each person has to take some really important steps in order to get there, so our goal is to start putting the pieces together for an incredible NCAA performance."
