USA Swimming has announced a staff of eight assistant coaches for the 2025 World Aquatics Championships in Singapore. They will join a new-look coaching staff that has just one head coach, Braden Holloway, working in concert with the new USA Swimming National Team Director Greg Meehan.
The pool swimming portion of the 2025 World Championships will run from July 27 through August 3.
This maintains Meehan’s commitment under the ‘experimental’ new structure to send the same total number of coaches, nine, to the World Championships.
The assistant coaching staff is a very new-look group, including a number of coaches who are making their debuts on Operation Gold staffs.
- Ron Aitken, Head Coach, Sandpipers of Nevada
- Herbie Behm, Head Coach, Arizona State University
- Courtney Caldwell, Assistant Coach, University of Virginia
- Ray Looze, Head Coach, Indiana University
- Anthony Nesty, Head Coach, University of Florida
- Jim Nickell, Head Coach, Bend Swim Club
- Erik Posegay, Associate Head Coach, University of Texas
- Noah Yanchulis, Assistant Coach, Cal
There are a lot of interesting dynamics to unpack here. The Paris 2024 Olympic men’s head coach Anthony Nesty is really the only ‘traditional’ choice, at least based on recent selection procedures. The coach of the country’s top two distance swimmers, both pros, in Katie Ledecky and Bobby Finke, he is the only assistant holdover from the pool staff in Paris (Meehan and Holloway were also on that staff; Ron Aitken led the open water program).
The staff includes Ron Aitken and Ray Looze, which will immediately score points for Meehan with the college of coaches. Both have been overlooked for past Olympic appointments in the pool in spite of having a lot of swimmers on those teams, which was one of the major contention points that frayed the relationship between coaches and the last administration.
Aitken and Jim Nickell of the Bend Swim Club will give USA Swimming’s core member clubs greater representation than we’ve seen for A-team meets in recent years. Nickell put breaststroker Campbell McKean, the best American junior breaststroker in generations (and the fastest junior 100 breaststroker ever), on the team.
The staff will also include a pair of assistant coaches from the NCAA Championship-winning programs: Erik Posegay from Texas and Courtney Caldwell from Virginia. Posegay, #2 on the depth chart for the Texas men who also works with women’s team member Jillian Cox, has been on several international staffs before, including at the 2024 World Short Course Championships. He was also an assistant at the 2015 Open Water World Championships, 2013 Duel in the Pool, and 2010 Junior Pan Pacific Championships while he was still mostly a club coach.
Caldwell, meanwhile, is the latest Virginia assistant to get a nod.
The most head-turning name in this category is Cal assistant Noah Yanchulis. Yanchulis, who finished undergrad at Seton Hall in 2018, is one of the greenest coaches ever named to a staff of this level – he has completed two seasons coaching at Cal after 6 years working at D2 Oklahoma Christian.
Highly regarded as a talented coach in tight swimming circles, in terms of name recognition and experience, he is probably 5th out of 5 Cal coaches behind high profile names like Dave Durden, Dave Marsh, Josh Huger, and Kim Williams.
After the nonstop Olympic year, some coaches have described passing up on this staff as a chance to take a break and recharge for the new cycle. International team coaching staffs are not paid by USA Swimming.
Also on the staff is Arizona State head coach Herbie Behm. The understudy to Bob Bowman for last year’s NCAA Championship winning Sun Devil men’s team, Behm has taken over the program this season to great success, attracting a number of pros like Michael Andrew, who made the team in the 50 fly and 50 breast.
Athletes by Coach on Staff
Note: these are, to our best knowledge, which athletes are training with each program. That does not mean that each named athlete is necessarily training under that coach primarily.
| Coach | Program |
Athlete Represntation
|
| Braden Holloway | NC State |
Katharine Berkoff, Quintin McCarty
|
| Ron Aitken | Sandpipers | |
| Herbie Behm | Arizona State |
|
| Courtney Caldwell | Virginia | |
| Ray Looze | Indiana | |
| Anthony Nesty | Florida | |
| Jim Nickell | Bend Swim Club | |
| Erik Posegay | Texas | |
| Noah Yanchulis | Cal |
Open Water
USA Swimming also finalized their coaching staff for the Open Water portion of the World Championships.
That team will be led by NCAP coach Bruce Gemmell and he will be assisted by the University of Minnesota’s primary distance coach Maddy Olson.
While NCAP doesn’t have any current swimmers on the team, Gemmell was one of the youth coaches for Katie Ledecky and is a veteran coach at the international level. Olson coaches Joey Tepper, who is ascribed to race the 10k in open water.
The open water portion of the 2025 World Championships will run from July 15-20.
By my count, only three female swimmers on the women’s squad have no previous Senior National Team experience.
I’m still trying to decide which is more screwed up, US Soccer & the USMNT or USA Swimming under Greg “Peter principle” Meehan.
Can you give one example to support your claim?
The thing is we don’t really know how good coach Noah is. I haven’t seen anything from him at Oklahoma. How did he get the cal job? The talent pool at cal is of such a high caliber Michael Scott would do well.
As Coleman says below, Gabriel Jett views Yanchulis as his primary coach and this is the first year Jett makes an international team and he’s been at Cal for 4 years. Make of that what you will
Yeah but anyway can stand there and give a practice Dave wrote
I know, the swimmers know, the head coaches know … he’s not going to Singapore to develop talent, he is going Singapore to be on the ground managing high caliber athletes who trust him and have performed for the staff he is an important part of. This is one reason why it’s good to have the National Team director overseeing selection of staff.
OC was a top 10 mens team with a national champion and multiple A finalists during his time there.
It’s funny that Gemmell is mentioned only as just Ledecky’s coach at NCAP considering his own daughter is on the team
And his son was an Olympian as well!
Not super important, but Carson is missing from Texas
Is Bowman gonna be with France? I Would be surprised if he is not in Singapore
The real question is Bowman gonna choose to coach France or Canada for 2028
Hungary. Isn’t obvious with Hubert Kos?
Not when McIntosh is set to win a ton of gold medals and break world records…
France would be my guess
Hubert Kos, Hungarian goulash …. where do you think Benedict Arnold’s next destination lies?
7 men and only 1 women named to the Worlds coaching staff ???
Not many women coaches coach these athletes. Most are coached by men. It is a fact!
Teri McKeever is, uh, taking a break from coaching or something.
Courtney Caldwell herself swam under Braden Holloway at NC State before transferring to USC toward the end of her collegiate career. A pretty cool full-circle moment for Braden I’m sure!