The Auburn Tigers swimming and diving program is Auburn University's representative in the sport of swimming and diving. The Tigers compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 and are members of the Southeastern Conference (SEC). The program started in 1932 when the pool was in the basement of the gymnasium. The program had to telegraph their timed results to other schools and compare as the pool was too small for competitions.
The Tigers' first national champion was Scott Spann Sr, who won the 200m Individual Medley in 1978. The women's team became a full NCAA sport in 1982. David Marsh was hired in 1990 and he would make Auburn into a national powerhouse.
Under Marsh the program won a combined twelve NCAA championships. The men have won eight (1997, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009) while the women have won five (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007). David Marsh stepped down at the end of the 2006–2007 season. He was replaced by former Auburn, Texas Longhorns and Stanford University head coach Richard Quick. The Tiger men won the 2009 national championship, the 8th for the men and 13th total for the program. In May 2009 assistant coach Brett Hawke was promoted to co-head coach to run the program together with Quick. On June 10, Coach Quick died after a six-month struggle with brain cancer. In March 2018, following the conclusion of the NCAA men's and women's championships, Hawke informed the team he would be resigning as the head coach after 10 seasons. On April 28, 2018 NC State Wolfpack assistant swimming coach Gary Taylor was named the eighth head coach of the program. Following the 2021 NCAA Championships in which the men's and women's teams failed to score any points, Auburn and Taylor mutually decided to part ways. Auburn athletics director Allen Greene announced a national search for Taylor's successor would begin immediately. On April 23, 2021, Auburn announced former Auburn swimmer Ryan Wochomurka was hired to be the new head coach of both the men's and women's teams.
Auburn has regularly been represented in the Olympic Games, with a university record eighteen swimmers at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games where five Auburn Tigers won a record twelve medals. At the same Olympics, Kirsty Coventry, now president of the International Olympic Committee, won her seventh Olympic medal to replace Auburn alumnus and NBC swimming commentator Rowdy Gaines at the top of the Auburn roster of Olympic medallists. Also in the Beijing games César Cielo Filho became the first Auburn swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal in the 50m Free Style event.
History Auburn's swimming and diving program got off to a modest start in 1932. Swimming in the basement of the Alumni Gym (which no longer exists on campus) the Tigers swam in a small pool which only had room for three lanes. Swimmers were timed and results were telegraphed to other schools for comparisons. The first real competitions were held in 1936, with ten swimmers competing. The Tigers first swam in the SEC Championships in 1940 and placed 5th. With the outbreak of World War II, Auburn stopped all intercollegiate sports and swimming was not reinstated after the war due to inadequate facilities. The team was reinstated in 1947, and reentered the SEC Championships in 1948. Throughout the 1950s and 60's, the program garnered little attention as it was mostly coached by volunteers and swimmers consisted of the fastest members of the university's mandatory swim classes.
A new university swim team was formed in the fall of 1970, and two major changes helped transition the program into the modern era of collegiate swimming. A competition pool was constructed adjacent to Memorial Coliseum (renamed to Beard-Eaves Coliseum in 1993) through the support of university president Harry M. Philpott. In addition to a new pool, the university hired Bill Washington as the program's first official head coach. In 1973, Washington moved into a teaching role and the athletics department hired Eddie Reese to take over. The swim program experienced a rapid rise to national prominence under the leadership of Reese. Auburn finished 3rd in the SEC and 17th in the NCAA meet in 1974, the highest finish in school history at that time. The Tigers climbed up to second in the NCAA's by 1978, in which Auburn captured the first individual NCAA champion in school history when Scott Spann Sr. won the 200 IM and the 100 breaststroke. Following the 1978 season, Reese left the Auburn program to take over as the coach at the University of Texas. After his departure, Auburn hired Iowa State men's swimming coach Richard Quick to be Reese's successor. Auburn experienced continued success under Quick as the men finished in sixth at the 1979 NCAA championships and fifth in 1980 and 1981. In 1982, women's swimming became an official SEC sport, and the Auburn women's program finished fourth at the AIAW Championships. After the conclusion of the 1982 season, Quick left Auburn to become the coach of the women's program at the University of Texas, serving beside Eddie Reese. Auburn replaced Quick with John Asmuth, who was a swimmer during Reese's tenure at Auburn. Asmuth was known for helping coach two of Auburn's early Olympic swimmers, Rowdy Gaines and Per Johansson, but perhaps his best contribution to Auburn's swim program was James Martin Aquatics Center. Asmuth served as a key member in planning and gaining the support for the construction of the world-class natatorium. Asmuth served as the head coach for eight years where his teams finished in the top ten in three years and top twenty another three years.
In 1990, Auburn hired David Marsh who would take the Tigers to new heights. He led the 1994 men to an SEC title, the first in school history. That same year, the Tiger women won the medley relay, becoming the first team outside of Stanford, Texas, or Florida to win an NCAA title in a relay at the NCAA meet. The men would go on to win the 1997 national championship, the first team in Auburn history to win an NCAA title. The women swimmers became the first Auburn women's team to win an NCAA title in 2002. The women would then win the SEC title in 2003 for the first time, with the men also winning an SEC Championship (their seventh consecutive) marking the first time the men's and women's SEC championships were held by the same school. Later that year, the Auburn teams combined to sweep the NCAA titles, another first for men's and women's teams coached by the same person. Auburn had established itself as a national swimming power. Auburn had another first for a swimming program in 2005. After winning the 2005 national title the Auburn men's team became the first men's swimming and diving team invited to be honored at the White House by then President George W. Bush. The women joined the men the next year.
David Marsh's career as Auburn head coach ended in March 2007 after leading the Tigers to the 2007 men's and women's national titles in his fourth sweep of the events. Marsh finished with 17 SEC Championships and a record-tying 12 national championships. The coach he tied is incoming Tigers coach Richard Quick who won 12 combined national titles as the Women's head coach for Texas and Stanford.
In 2008 the Auburn women finished second to Arizona Wildcats while the men finished in fifth place.
In 2009 the Tigers reclaimed the Men's national title by edging out second place Texas by 39 points. The 2009 title was the eighth for the men and the 13th overall for Auburn. It also marked Richard Quick's 13th title after winning twelve at Stanford and Texas. He moved ahead of former Auburn coach David Marsh for the most titles for a coach in his career and became the first coach to win national titles at three schools.
During the 2008–2009 season Brett Hawke, a former Auburn swimmer himself, took over the day-to-day running of the men's program after Richard Quick was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After the season Auburn Athletics Director Jay Jacobs announced that Hawke would be promoted to co-head coach and would work with both the Men's and Women's programs while consulting with Quick.
Under the leadership of Hawke, the men's team captured the 2010, 2011, and 2012 SEC championships, but failed to win another national title after 2009. In March 2018, following the NCAA men's and women's championships, Hawke informed the team he would be resigning from his position. The athletics department, under the new leadership of athletic director Allen Greene, immediately began searching for Hawke's successor. On April 28, 2018 NC State Wolfpack assistant swimming coach Gary Taylor was named the new head coach. Taylor immediately faced a challenging situation as two of the program's top swimmers, Zach Apple and Hugo Gonzalez, announced their intent to transfer following Taylor's arrival. On April 19, 2021, Auburn athletics director Allen Greene announced that Auburn and coach Gary Taylor had mutually agreed to part ways, and a national search for his successor would begin immediately. At the 2021 NCAA Championships, both the men's and women's programs failed to score any points.
On April 23, 2021, former Auburn swimmer Ryan Wochomurka was announced as the new head coach of the program. Wochomurka formerly served as the head coach of the Houston Cougars women's swimming and diving program. Wochomurka swam at Auburn from 2002 to 2005 where he was a 21-time All-American.
Facilities
The Auburn Swimming and Diving program competes in the James E. Martin Aquatics Center. The center first opened in the 1993 and was designed to be one of the premier natatoriums in collegiate swimming and diving. The James E. Martin Aquatics Center has hosted multiple competitions including the SEC Championships three times, the NCAA Championships twice, as well the 1995, 2000, and 2005 U.S. Open competitions. In the months leading up to the Atlanta Olympic Games swimming teams from Israel, China, Japan, South Africa, and Finland used the facility to train while the US Olympic Water Polo also used the facility.
The facility cost $10.5 million and was a pet project of its namesake, former Auburn University President James E. Martin. Seating at the center has room for 1,000 spectators and an additional 800 poolside seats for competitors. The competition pool features a state of the art gutter system that absorbs waves instead of reverberating back into the pool, which creates a calmer swimming surface. The bulkheads also provide a flow-through design to prevent waves on turns. The pool is nine feet deep at the shallowest and below the diving apparatus. The entire pool is long (232 ft) and 25 yards (75 ft) wide. The bulkheads are movable and allow variable lengths for competition and practice as well as simultaneous diving. The facility also features the original Auburn competition pool, renovated as a warm-up and practice pool.
In the summer of 2007, Auburn University completed work on a new $1 million outdoor training pool, part of a large scale effort by the Auburn Athletics Department to improve the school's facilities.
Men's swimming and diving On top of their seven national titles, the Auburn men have won several SEC championships. Since their first SEC Championship in 1994, Auburn has won 14 out of the last 15 SEC titles, including 13 straight since 1996. Only Tennessee has broken Auburn's SEC championship streak. Between January 11, 2001, and January 11, 2007, Auburn did not lose a single dual meet (meets in between 2 or 3 teams only). The only team to beat Auburn during that time period was arch swimming rival Texas, when they snapped the Tigers 44 consecutive dual meet winning streak by a score of 130–113.