Kansas Expands Swimming Coaching Staff With Ryan Evans Hiring

The University of Kansas women’s swimming & diving program has expanded its coaching staff, bringing Ryan Evans in as a new swimming assistant coach.

The program is led by Clark Campbell, and Evans joins a staff that includes associate head coach Jen Bentz and diving coach Allen Feng. This means that Kansas will have a bigger coaching staff than last season, taking advantage of new NCAA rules that eliminate the volunteer assistant position but allows schools to expand the number of full-privileges coaches.

“First, we want to thank Travis Goff and Maya Ozery for the opportunity to add to our staff,” said Campbell. “It’s been a blessing to our program. We are truly excited about it and I know that this is going to help, most importantly, the student-athlete experience. We are excited to welcome Ryan Evans and his family to KU. Ryan has a tremendous background. We looked for a specific skill set for this position and he checked all the boxes. He has a really good vision on where he wants to take his particular areas and make our program better. With his background as a coach in college and club, he will open up a lot of doors and we’re really excited to see what he brings to our program.”

Evans comes from the Division II University of Mary in Bismarck, North Dakota. As the head coach, Evans led the Marauders to a 6th-place finish at the Northern Sun Intercollegiate Conference Championship. Evans helped cultivate a winning culture, leading swimmer Victoria Murillo to the NCAA Division II National Championships. Murillo also earned a First Team All-America distinction, the first in program history by finishing 8th in the 500 free with a prelims time of 4:54.00.

That time in the 500 free is faster than Kansas’ leader last season, Hailey Farrell, who swam 4:55.20 at Big 12s.

Before his work at the University of Mary, Evans was a part of the coaching staff at the University of New Mexico as an assistant. With the Lobos, Evans’ primary responsibility was the sprint group, where he saw a majority of the sprinters achieve personal bests throughout the 2021-22 campaign. Evans also has prior experience at the club level, as he was the head coach of the Reno Aquatic Club from 2017-21 in Reno, Nevada.