Competitor Coach of the Month: Jack Bauerle, Georgia

Competitor Coach of the Month is a recurring SwimSwam feature shedding light on a U.S.-based coach who has risen above the competition. As with any item of recognition, Competitor Coach of the Month is a subjective exercise meant to highlight one coach whose work holds noteworthy context – perhaps a coach who was clearly in the limelight, or one whose work fell through the cracks a bit more among other stories. If your favorite coach wasn’t selected, feel free to respectfully recognize them in our comment section.

The Georgia Bulldogs had great showings at their fall invitational, while several Georgia-based pros stood out in the ISL taking place in Hungary.

Coach Jack Bauerle has spent years cobbling together sprint free relays out of converted IMers, breaststrokers, distance swimmers, divers… well, maybe not the last one. But Bauerle took a big step in addressing UGA’s sprint deficiencies in the last few rounds of recruiting, and it paid off with three school records on relays.

Here are the three school record relays:

200 free relay:

400 free relay:

200 medley relay:

Dillon Downing looks like a true sprinter to build around in his sophomore season. Camden Murphy has been a standout flyer, and broke the school record with a 44.89 in the 100 fly. That was Murphy’s first swim under 45 seconds, and moves him to #21 all-time in the event. Meanwhile the freshman Luca Urlando has been a standout in his NCAA debut.

Some other key swims for the Georgia Bulldogs:

  • Courtney Harnish‘s 4:36.86 win in the 500 free was just 1.3 seconds off her best time.
  • Freshman Jake Magahey hit personal bests in the 500 free (4:10.48) and 1650 free (14:33.78).
  • Sophomore Zoie Hartman was just a tenth off her personal bests in both the 100 breast (58.34) and 200 breast (2:06.34).

And while they haven’t been training with Bauerle for the past month, several of his Georgia-based professionals helped the Cali Condors win the ISL’s 2020 season title: Olivia Smoliga, Natalie Hinds, Veronica Burchill, Nic Fink, Gunnar Bentz and Kevin Cordes.

 

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Emma Swanwick
3 years ago

What about matt Kredich at tennessee had 5 swimmers with great performances at isl

JKsssss
3 years ago

Jack actually did have to put his divers on relays in a dual meet against Clemson in 1999. The divers rounded out their last relay to secure the win in a relay only meet. I should also credit Harvey Humphries for doing the point calculations and telling Jack they would lose without the points from that last relay.

SwimFani
3 years ago

Is Coach Bauerle the person pictured on the left or right? Wow great improvement for UGA under this coach. I am picking UGA to win both the WOMENS and MENS SEC MEET in 2021.

SwimFani
Reply to  SwimFani
3 years ago

I was informed that Coach Bauerle is the person on the right in the photo and the other person is former OSU Coach Bill Wadley. Is Coach Wadley standing on a chair??

JCO
3 years ago

I thought Bentz left UGA to join the Texas pro group?

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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