American College Connection Hires Ed Lower as Assistant Director of Swimming

American College Connection is a SwimSwam Partner

American College Connection, a national leader in recruiting services in the sports of swimming, diving, and water polo, has grown its staff with the addition of Ed Lower as Assistant Director of Swimming and Swim Club Coordinator.

“I have known Ed since he was a swimmer at Iowa,” said ACC founder Rick Paine. “We coached together at the U. of Nebraska and he served as one of my assistants with Nebraska Aquatics. He has been at the top of swimming as a competitor and coach and has a thorough understanding of the recruiting process. His best qualification is that he genuinely cares about the kids.”

Lower joins ACC’s staff of former college aquatics coaches that includes Lori Payne, Donny Brush, and Gary Cox (diving).

Ed has been coaching full-time since 1987.  He started as a volunteer coach at the University of Iowa,  where he was a three-year All-American and team captain his senior year.  After graduation, he went home to the Maryland area to coach with Nations Capital (Curl-Burke) as an age group coach and Head coach at Georgetown Prep HS that went undefeated.  Ed was fortunate to work daily with Coach Jozsef Nagy and a group of multiple Olympians. He took that knowledge to the U of Nebraska, as a graduate assistant, where he met and coached with ACC founder Rick Paine.  After grad school, Ed took a Head coaching job in SD at Siouxland Sharks taking them from 40th in the LSC to 4th in just one season.  He moved to Texas as an assistant at Space City Aquatic Team and then as Head Coach at Galveston Island and Ball H.S.   In 1999 he moved to Raleigh NC to be the head coach at Tarheel Aqua Racers.  Over the next twenty years in Raleigh, he coached 100+ National top ten, including 5 #1 swims.  He had many Junior National qualifiers and won the 2004 NCSA Juniors team titles as well as the National co-coach of the year award.  He coached several swimmers to Nationals, National Junior team, and Olympic Trials.

Ed has been on ALL sides of the recruiting process through his coaching career and parent of two swimmers.  He now would like to help swimmers achieve their goals of swimming and studying at a great college or university by guiding families through the process.