Editor’s note: This award used to be “Athlete of the Meet,” but several years ago was changed to an “Athlete of the Year” award. Many conferences give out “of the Meet” honors, so we wanted to ensure clarity in the spectrum of the awards.
For the second-straight year, the coaches at the 2014 Men’s NCAA Swimming & Diving Championship meet have elected Kevin Cordes as their Swimmer of the Year.
Cordes, despite scoring no relay points at the meet, wow’ed the voting coaches enough with his individual performances to earn the award. Just like he did last year, Cordes swept the 100 and 200 yard breaststrokes, and in the process broke every yards record available to him with the fastest performances in history. In the 100, that was a 50.04 to top Georgia’s Nic Fink (51.48) and in the 200 that was a 1:48.66 to beat Indiana’s Cody Miller (1:51.82).
There was certainly no swimmer who, across two swims, was as dominant as Cordes was, and when the award was announced, the voting was described as “not even close.”
Other candidates for the award include Cal freshman Ryan Murphy, who broke the NCAA Record in the 200 back on Saturday, won the 100 back, and was a part of three winning Cal relay swims. He was the best swimmer on the winning team, and even as a freshman that garnered him some consideration. Note that his record-breaking 200 back, however, didn’t come until after many coaches had likely already filled out their ballots.
Florida’s Marcin Cieslak and Louisville’s Joao de Lucca, both double-event champions, also received some discussion, though neither of them wound up with any national records from the meet.
Meanwhile, the Swimming Coach of the Year honor went to Cal’s Dave Durden for leading his team to the National Championship. Durden’s team both well out-swam seed, and with the title hanging on the edge on the meet’s final day, they were arguably at their best with clutch swims from the likes of Jeremy Bagshaw, Marcin Tarczynski, and Murphy.
That will give the Cal front-man his third team title in the last four seasons, and his first working with new assistant Yuri Suguiyama.
Honorable mentions here have to start with Texas’ Eddie Reese, whose men’s team recorded their 28th top-3 finish at NCAA’s in Reese’s 36 years leading the program.
Reaching further down the standings, given that this is a whole year award, shouts have to go to NC State coach Braden Holloway and Alabama coach Dennis Pursley for each leading their teams to breakout seasons, with 13th and 12th place finishes at NCAA’s, respectively; and to the Georgia staff led by associate head coach Harvey Humphries for leading the men to a 5th-place finish – without head coach Jack Bauerle on deck – their highest finish since the 1996-1997 season.
As for the diving awards, they were a no-doubter in a sweep for Texas. Freshman Michael Hixon, who came in with many accolades as a former Youth Olympic Games medalist and a part of the U.S. World Championship team this summer, lived up to the billing by sweeping the 1 meter and 3 meter springboard events.
But what really made this a no-doubter, and what made giving his coach Matt Scoggins the NCAA Diving Coach of the Year honor a no-doubter, was more subtle.
According to USA Diving’s logs, in Hixon’s entire career at the elite level of the sport, he has never dived the platform at a junior national, national, or international-level meet. On the final day of the NCAA Championships, Hixon placed 7th in that event, as a freshman, which kept Texas in the hunt for the team title. That’s an astonishing learning curve.
And 2sd place Texas scored 71 points in diving. Cal really clobbered them……
What a great NCAAs!! Congrats to Cal!
So I feel that even though these awards are for the year, the goal of swimmer and coaches is to swim their fastest at NCAAs and that takes a year’s worth of training.
Here are my picks for coach and swimmer of the year:
Coach of the Year: Eddie Reese
He put Texas in the position of winning without having one individual or relay win. That has never been done. The closest to that would have been Florida in 1983 and Texas in 1996, where no individual events were won by the team. They did, however, have relay wins. This was a great coaching job by him and his staff.… Read more »
In my opinion it was either Cordes for his 2 American and NCAA records or Murphy for his 2 individual wins and his huge relay contribution.
“There was certainly no swimmer who, across two swims, was as dominant as Cordes was, and when the award was announced, the voting was described as “not even close.”
I find it funny that the haters think they know more about who should be NCAA Swimmer of the YEAR than the NCAA coaches. Congratulations Kevin on two AMAZING swims and a great year and two American Records, you continue to improve and dominate and definitely deserve the award bestowed upon you by the coaches.
They should have a swimmer of the meet and without a doubt it is not Kevin Cordes. Yeah he won 2 events but he also dq’ed a relay and had another where the swimmer jumped early off him. It should be who scored the most points which is Cieslak. He also won 2 events and added a runner up as well. He also contributed on 4 relays. Cordes is a great but he is also limited and can only contribute in 2 events and 2 relays(Which he didnt).
I’m surprised there is such adamant disagreement on this from some people. I thought Cordes would be a slam dunk and deservedly so. Although I can see why people feel Murphy has a case for his two quality wins (one a record) and in his major contributions toward winning his team a championship at this meet. But really this is about the best swimmer. I never had a problem with Lochte winning even though his Florida team wasn’t in the running for the team title. Not to mention Ed Moses winning the award for non factor Virginia back in 2000. I don’t think one DQ negates Kevin’s complete and unprecedented dominance over both breaststroke distances.
“Note that his record-breaking 200 back, however, didn’t come until after many coaches had likely already filled out their ballots…”
People vote before Day 3 of nationals? That’s kind of jumping the gun isn’t it? What if Murphy went 1:35? What if it was Cieslak that went 1:39.3 instead of Bosch? That’s kind of ridiculous.
That said, Cordes was pretty awesome individually.
Barry – they get the ballots at the start of finals on Day 3, and while they technically have until pretty late in the session to fill them in (I want to say the end of the 200 fly), our observations are that most coaches have them filled out very early in the session.
At our high school conference championships, our award ballots are “due” either right before or right after the 200 free relay. You know, before some crazy swimmer wins the 100 back and 100 breast back-to-back.
#getoverit Congrats Cordes!