The UNLV swimming & diving program has announced the hiring of Pieter Ritz as its new assistant coach. Ritz comes to the program from his alma mater Cleveland State, where he worked for three seasons.
He served as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator in his first two seasons before being promoted to associate head coach last season.
During his time at Cleveland State, Ritz helped produce one Horizon League Athlete of the Year, 12 HL individual champions, four men’s team runner-up finishes and one women’s team second-place finish at conference championships. The program’s success with his assistance also stretched into the classroom, as the Vikings had 13 student-athletes make the HL All-Academic teams.
“Coach Pieter is coming from programs really similar to ours with swim teams that punch above their weight class and get it done at a national and international level,” said Loorz. “He is a values-driven coach, which makes him a great fit for our staff. We’re excited to welcome him to the Rebel family.”
Prior to Cleveland State, he spent four seasons at Cincinnati (2015-2019) as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator. That included the team’s first-ever men’s conference championship with back-to-back titles in 2018 and 2019, topping the four-team American Athletic Conference before it was later reduced to just two programs. Additionally, UC earned 25 AAC individual and relay titles, an AAC Men’s Most Outstanding Swimmer award, two AAC Women’s Most Outstanding Swimmer honors, a pair of First Team All-American accolades on the women’s side by Jacqueline Keire and its first male NCAA Championships individual qualifier.
He also spent a season at Florida Gulf Coast as a volunteer assistant in 2014-2015 in his hometown of Fort Myers. There he worked under current Florida State head coach Neal Studd as part of a conference championship squad.
He started his coaching career in 2012, where he spent two seasons as a graduate assistant at NCAA Division II program Henderson State.
A former student-athlete himself, Ritz was a four-year letterwinner for Cleveland State’s swimming program, where he garnered the team’s Leadership Award as a senior and served on the Student-Athlete Advisory Council for three years. He graduated with his bachelor’s degree in communication in 2012 and then went on to earn his master’s degree in sports administration from Henderson State in 2014.
While the position is a step down in title from Cleveland State from associate head coach to assistant, in many other ways it is a step up the coaching ladder. At Cleveland State, he was the only assistant swimming coach, whereas at UNLV he will be part of a larger staff of 3 assistants under head coach Ben Loorz.
UNLV also regularly qualifies swimmers for the NCAA Championship meet. The men’s team has scored points at the Division I NCAA Championships in 18 different seasons, and has qualified swimmers almost every season for decades (2017 was the most recent exception). In 2022, the team sent a 400 free relay, which finished the meet in 24th place.
The women’s team hasn’t had quite that same level of success, but did qualify swimmers for the NCAA Championships as recently as 2018. The UNLV women have scored at the NCAA Championships 8 times in the last 26 years and was the college team of European Champion and four-time Hungarian Olympian Zsu Jakabos.
Ritz will take the position previously held by Lauren Jordan, who left to become the Director of Operations for the Florida State swimming & diving program. There are a few ties there to round out this story: besides linking up with Ritz’s former boss Neal Studd, the program’s head coach, Jordan will also be reunited with Steve Wood, who left UNLV last year to become an assistant for the Seminoles.
Congrats!
Kenny Powers!
Business in the front, party in the back!