Northwestern Hires Nevada’s Abby Steketee As New Women’s Head Coach

The Northwestern women’s swimming & diving team has hired Abby Steketee as their new head coach to replace the outgoing Jimmy Tierney, who left the program in April after 27 years. Steketee joins the Wildcats after three years as the head coach at Nevada in Reno.

Steketee is originally from Danville, Virginia, but is a 2003 graduate of Northwestern where she was a captain of the Crew team and was selected as Most Valuable Rower three times. She also worked with the Northwestern Aquatic Swim Team in Evanston, a local club affiliate.

Nevada finished third at the Moutnain West Conference Championship meets each of the last two seasons under Steketee. They sent three atheletes (two swimmers and one diver) to the 2015 NCAA Championships, including Yawen Li, who was 9th in the 400 IM with a 4:05.56.

During her tenure, Steketee took at least one swimmer to the NCAA Championships each season, with a combined four different athletes earning at least one berth. That’s as compared to just two different swimmers from Northwestern going in the same time period, with no Wildcats qualifying in 2015.

The new coach will take over a slumping program that finished 10th out of 13 teams at last year’s Big Ten Championships. That was the program’s lowest finish since placing 10th (then out of 10 teams) at the 1983 Championship meet.

Prior to taking over at Nevada, Steketee was an assistant at South Carolina for four seasons. While at Nevada, her husband Steve, also a Northwestern graduate, was one of her assistants, and Abby Steketee says that while staff decisions haven’t been made yet, she anticipates Steve having a major role with the team.

7
Leave a Reply

Subscribe
Notify of

7 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Chris Woodard
9 years ago

Way to go Abby!

Steve Allnutt
9 years ago

Woohoo go Abby!

Sage Hopkins
9 years ago

Congrats Abby!!!

Sergio Lopez Miro
9 years ago

Congrats Abby!!!

She will do an amazing job at her Alma matter. I had the privilege to work with her at Northwestern and then she came to West Virginia to work with me and Steve Steketee, and at WVU she was instrumental in helping us build a team that in three season won the Big East Championships. Great hire and very happy for her and Steve to be going back to Evanston.

Jeanne Fleck
9 years ago

Congrats Abby

9 years ago

Welcome back home Abby. Congrats, old friend.

Kristin Hill
9 years ago

Abby is such a fantastic hire – she will do amazing things there!! Way to go, Abby!

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

Read More »