Bret Lundgaard with Molly Hannis, Kira Toussaint, and Peter John Stevens.
Princeton press release available here.
Princeton University has hired Tennessee assistant coach Bret Lundgaard as the head coach of the women’s swimming and diving team. Lundgaard will replace Susan Teeter, who announced her retirement last December. Teeter guided the women’s team to 17 Ivy League conference championships, earning the 2011 “Lifetime Achievement Award” from the College Swim Coaches Association.
“I want to thank Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the Ford Family Director of Athletics, and the rest of the Princeton athletic department, for this unparalleled opportunity,” Lundgaard said. “Their commitment to student-athlete development and world-class performance was evident throughout this hiring process, and I’m honored to join an athletic department that is responsible for helping develop the greatest student-athletes in the world.
“While you rarely want to follow a coaching legend like Coach Teeter, the opportunity to lead a program with the history, tradition and commitment to academic and athletic excellence of Princeton Swimming & Diving is too special to ignore,” Lundgaard added. “I thank Coach Teeter for her relentless service to Princeton Swimming & Diving. You and your teams’ paw prints will be a part of this exciting new chapter for Princeton Swimming & Diving.”
“We could not be more pleased to welcome Coach Lundgaard to the Tiger family,” said Mollie Marcoux Samaan, the Ford Family Director of Athletics. “The search committee was thoroughly impressed by Bret’s overall approach to coaching, as well as his extremely well-articulated definition of Education Through Athletics. His track record of success both as a student-athlete and as a coach speaks for itself, but it was his passion for helping his student-athletes succeed athletically, academically and socially through an emphasis on both performance and values that impressed us the most throughout the search process.”
Lundgaard has spent the last five years as an assistant coach for the Tennessee men’s and women’s swimming and diving program. He was head coach Matt Kredich’s first hire after combining the men’s and women’s programs in 2012. Lundgaard worked primarily with the breaststrokers and butterflyers, as well as the middle distance groups. As such he worked with 2016 Olympians Molly Hannis (USA), Kira Toussaint (Netherlands), and Peter John Stevens (Slovenia).
Lundgaard also spearheaded recruiting efforts and served as director of the Vols’ swim camp. Prior to Tennessee, he spent three years as an assistant coach at Army West Point, where he served as recruiting coordinator and trained freestylers and IMers.
Lundgaard swam from 2004-2008 at the University of Washington, where he was team captain in his junior and senior seasons. He earned Pac-10 All-Academic honors in each of his four years at UW, and was a 2008 Olympic Trials qualifier in the 100 fly. Lundgaard left Seattle with a bachelor’s in Journalism and a Certificate of Business & Marketing. While at Tennessee he earned a master’s in Kinesiology with an emphasis in Sports Psychology and Motor Behavior.
Lundgaard and his wife, Jessica Lundgaard (Milicic), have a two-year-old daughter, Isabella.
Congratulations Bret! Wonderful accomplishment!
Love, Dad
Meanwhile, what’s going on with the men’s team?
The men’s team was not unique among the student body but had the misfortune of the school being permitted access to their listserv going back 15 years. Not one complaint was made against any of the 2016-2017 roster. Let’s hope they can regain their passion for swimming.
I meant what’s going on GOING FORWARD. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Congratulations to Princeton and Bret! Future is bright for that program!
QUESTION : happyNot for Lungaard but a woman coach leaving the NCAA replaced by a man just perpetuates the numbers staying bad for women head coaches in D1 Swimming. Soon Terri McK will retire, then Cindy at UCLA and if they are replaced by men, numbers continue to fall. You look at all other D1 sports and the coaches are a majority of women coaching women. WHAT IS GOING ON IN D1 SWIMMING HEAD COACHES BEING 90% MEN?
…. numbers staying bad? I’m confused, what are the numbers supposed to be? 50/50? Why can’t we look past the sex of the coach and look at the quality of the INDIVIDUAL?
The current list of National Team coaches is something like 62-3 men-women. That makes men about 95% of National Team coaches. Do you honestly think that men are 95% better, on average, as coaches of elite athletes? You honestly don’t think that there are systemic problems leading to that disparity? We don’t live in a black and white world, and disparities like this don’t happen in a vacuum.
Not enough female coaches in major positions = True
Statistics you quoted = Possibly True
Attempted interpretation of statistics = See below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQCU36pkH7c
How about the number of women who get married, have kids and then leave the sport?! This is the number one problem.
If I could downvote a million times I would. How about having a profession where you can get married, have kids and continue to work?
Geno at UConn has your answer!
As someone with two female coaches in college, I loved my experience, but there’s really nothing wrong with individual cases like this… if you’re going to address gender inequality in college coaching, you can’t look at it based on one or two coaching transitions like these, but address it as a systemic issue which is much harder
Absolutely agreed. Ya know, I’m a male, I’m a swammer, and there is a lot I love about the sport. I will always be a fan. There’s a couple of reasons that I will never guide my daughters towards swimming. But if they found the sport on there own somehow, I very well might encourage them to reconsider and try to guide them towards another sport. I certainly don’t think that a girl should never be coached by a man, but there is something about the culture of the sport of swimming that doesn’t sit well with me when it’s the norm for college level females to be coached by men. I’ve looked at the collegiate numbers before and I’m… Read more »
“I don’t know what is going on”….maybe the same reason that women far outnumber men in the K-6 classroom? I wouldn’t suggest in this example it’s because men are getting a raw deal.
Men are getting a raw deal by being less represented in the part of the teaching profession that pays the least? What about the fact that male professors make up the majority of positions in higher ed?
Sorry W3T don’t agree that men are getting a raw deal, they are choosing not to follow that path. Money may be the primary reason, but I would suggest it’s more about choosing not to go down that path. I would like to know the names of the women in the college coaching vortex with ten years experience getting passed over for head coaching jobs? Why ten? It appears that is how much time this young man put into the profession before he was considered for a job like Princeton. Please don’t tell me women are being run out of the sport by their male counterparts? It is my belief that using other sports, many that don’t have combined programs… Read more »
Women are choosing not to continue in the sport at that level because it is not amenable to having families, the burden of which, even now, in 2017, falls mostly on the shoulders of women.
I think there are relatively few women that are directly “forced out” of the sport by the men they work with. It’s the structural inequality of the profession that leads to higher rates of women dropping out.
I am living this. I’m a female swim coach of reproductive age. I’m paid next to nothing (seriously – without my husband I’d be living below the poverty line) yet have almost no time off. I will probably not have kids because (a) I’m not going… Read more »
He’s a Tennessee guy. I’m sure Coach Teeter was on board with this hire. Great news for the PU Women’s Team.
Congratulations Princeton and Bret. Onward and upward…
What a great hire, will Suzanne Yee stick around?
She will not.
Wow, wish I could start my four years over to swim for him (well, minus the thesis, I don’t need to do that again). Congratulations ladies, the future is looking bright!
Great hire! Congrats Princeton women!