Cleveland State swimming and diving head coach Hannah Burandt has resigned from her position after 5 seasons. Her resignation comes after winning Horizon League Men’s Co-Coach of the Year honors at the Horizon League Championships in February. The Vikings men’s team came in 3rd at the HL Championships, while the women’s team took 5th.
During her tenure at Cleveland State, the Vikings earned well over a dozen Horizon League event titles, including a pair of relays wins. The majority of those HL titles came on the men’s side, while Cleveland State only saw one individual champion in the last 5 years. That’s not to say the women’s team was unsuccessful under Burandt. In fact, in her first season with the team, Burandt led CSU to 2nd-place finishes for both the men’s and women’s teams at the 2020 Horizon League Championships. That finish marked Cleveland State’s highest women’s finish, both in place and point total, in 7 years.
Burandt’s CSU teams have also been excellent in the classroom. During her first semester as the head coach, the women’s team posted a 3.55 average GPA, which tied for the highest in the conference, while the men’s team had the most selections to the Horizon League Academic Honor Roll that semester. Additionally, Cleveland State saw 7 athletes named to the HLSD All-Academic Teams for the 2020-2021 season, which was a conference high.
Burandt has not responded to SwimSwam’s request for comment, however, sources say she’s resigning to pursue opportunities outside of coaching. The most recent public record shows a salary of $66,167.56 for 2022. Burandt is also listed as the head coach of Vikings Masters.
Burandt’s coaching tenure prior to Cleveland State is full of stints with very successful programs. She came to CSU from Houston, where she spent 4 seasons as an assistant coach. She was at Houston while they were on the rise, going from the worst to the best within the American Athletic Conference. In Burdandt’s first season on the Houston staff, the Cougars jumped from last to 3rd in the AAC and produced 6 individual conference champions. At the 2017 AAC Championships, Houston won their first conference title in program history, and did so with a winning margin of over 100 points. Houston would go on to win the next 2 AAC Championships as well, marking Burandt’s tenure there as an assistant with 3 conference titles in 4 years. In 2018, the Cougars had 3 swimmers qualify for the NCA Championships, which was the most from any non-Power-Five program.
Prior to Houston, Burandt coached at Georgetown, where she helped the Hoyas to Big East runner-up finishes for both the men’s and women’s teams. She came to Georgetown from Louisville, where she helped the Cardinals to men’s and women’s ACC titles in 2014, as well as a pair of top-15 NCAA finishes.
Burandt’s coaching career began at Oberlin College.
As a swimmer, Burandt had a storied career at Eastern Michigan. She was a 4-time Mid-American Conference champion and helped set program records in all 3 freestyle relays. Burandt also helped EMU win their first 2 MAC titles in program history in 2006 and 2007. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.S. from EMU in 2009, then earned her Master’s degree in sports administration from Louisville in 2018.
Current assistant coaches Trent Richardson and Spencer Tussing, as well as diving coach Chalmers McGillivray remain on the Cleveland State staff.
This has been a nationwide trend with swim coaches since the pandemic. Until schools and the NCAA make coaches well-being a priority, you will continue to have a high-rate of coaches walking away from the industry.
$66K as head coach for both programs. And the masters coach.
“resigned …. to pursue opportunities outside of swimming.”
Ya think.
Quote of the year
That is a terribly low salary for a combined program. No head coach should have to have a second job.
Yes, this is shockingly low. Cleveland isn’t as expensive as say LA or NYC, but $66k is not a salary you can build savings, investments, and wealth easily with. It’s such a shame too because because being a head coach of a D1 program is the epitome of a career for a college swim coach and should be compensated as such.
Best of luck to Hannah! I know her personally and know she will succeed at whatever she chooses to do.
She did have pretty good benefits and was paying into the state retirement fund, but that is still shockingly low.
For Mid Major programs, this is more common that you would believe.
Right. 60s-70s for a mid major HC position is pretty typical. Coaching a combined program doesn’t tend to have the type of pay bump you’d think/hope it would. Cost of living for the surrounding area also seems to minimally impact salaries.
This wasn’t a resignation due to pay. I know the wording in the article might make you believe that but that’s not the case. Also, the Masters program is a separate entity from the college teams. It was an additional source of income, not part of the $66k salary.
CSU is one of the colleges that I have a degree from. Burandt was a good coach and is a great person. I hope whomever CSU brings in gets the team back to the top of the Horizon League and sends some people to the NCAA meet. Burandt seemed to be doing a pretty good job of recruiting international swimmers. Ohio has a lot of talent and it should not be that hard to recruit.
Ohio does have a lot of talent…but it also has a lot of good schools. D1 programs in the state of Ohio include:
Add in Uber-successful programs like Denison and Kenyon and recognize that all of these schools are trying to pull from the same pool (pun intended) of talent, hence the challenges of recruiting in-state.
CSU has the benefit of being in Northeast Ohio with a coed team. YSU is way out east, BGSU, Toledo, and Akron are all in the northern part of the state but don’t have a men’s team. If a swimmer wants to stay close to home, wants to have men and women instead of just women, or wants that in-state tuition discount, CSU is not a bad option. They also have really good engineering, education, nursing, and business programs, which is a massive plus.
One of my former assistants swam at CSU for Burandt. He had a lot of teammates that were nursing, business, or engineering majors. They did clinical rotations at the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals, both world-class… Read more »
Under rated city college and great facility
Hosted NCAA Mens Div I meet back in the day.
pool records from 1984 still on the board
When I was there in February, I think I saw at least one record from 1979 still on the board. I know that when they hosted the CSCAA NIC meet in 2018, some of those swimmers were able to break a few of the 1979 records. A kid from OSU broke the 200 fly record. I was a timer at that meet.
I used to have basically that entire record board memorized from all the laps I did there when I was in grad school. That was also the place I swam my last ever race. It is a great facility and a fast pool.
This will be a hot job opening!
Because the pay is really good and there’s lots of work/life balance?
$66K to coach 2 teams in a major city? She’s a smart woman so ANY other opportunity she seeks will bring much more income. Many more coaches will be leaving the profession because of pay, especially in this economy.
Y’all, she didn’t leave because of the pay…
CSU admin had a handful of issues that weren’t responded to in a satisfactory way. While I do believe this will be a quality opportunity for an up-and-coming coach, I don’t believe anyone would take or not take this job because of the pay.
Agree. Perfect for a single, 20-something, looking to work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. Right on!
A job well done, Hannah! Best wishes moving forward.
Is she going to WVU?
God I hope not
LMAO
WVU better hope not…