Mike Litzinger has resigned as the head coach of Notre Dame’s swimming & diving program and plans on retiring from the sport, UND Director of Athletics Jack Swarbick announced Monday.
In addition to Lizinger’s departure, associate head coach Aaron Bell is also no longer with the team.
“Making changes in the leadership of one of our programs is never easy, especially at the start of the competitive season, but recent events convinced Mike and me that a change in the direction of our program was necessary,” Swarbrick said.
Swarbrick did not elaborate on what those “recent events” were.
The school was sued by former associate head coach April Jensen earlier this year in federal court. She alleged that Litzinger treated her discriminatorily when after she told him that she was pregnant in 2019.
The case was formally dismissed by a judge last week at the mutual request of the involved parties. While no settlement agreement was announced, a mutual request for dismissal often implies an out-of-court settlement.
An attorney for Jensen told SwimSwam on Monday that he “cannot comment.”
Athletes who spoke to SwimSwam on the condition of anonymity say that they were informed in a team meeting on Monday afternoon of Litzinger’s departure, shortly before the official announcement by the school. Bell resigned shortly after.
Athletes say they were surprised by the announcement and were not given any specific reasons for the decision.
The Irish had a home dual meet scheduled for this weekend against Cincinnati, but the team will no longer be competing following Litzinger’s departure.
“We will instead use this week to develop an interim plan designed to allow our student-athletes to compete this year,” Swarbrick added.
Litzinger was named the head women’s coach at Notre Dame in April 2015, and assumed the role of head men’s coach one year later.
Prior to joining the Irish, Litzinger was an assistant coach at the University of North Carolina under coach Rich DeSelm for eight seasons.
Bell has been an associate head coach at Notre Dame for the last five seasons, joining the staff in June 2016 after spending five seasons at Virginia Tech.
Mark Bradshaw remains in place as the team’s head diving coach in his first season.
The school says it will begin a national search for a full-time leader later this year.
More to come out west.
The question is why did Bell leave?
Anything else come out on bells departure?
How quickly did it take for daddy to call ND AD to find a landing spot for Sam Busch. After all he tricked Craig Littlepage, another ACC AD to take his other boy, for a position he was clearly unqualified to hold.
Here for the comments.
* turns on popcorn maker *
Shane Tusup seems like a perfect candidate to fix a culture issue.
I wonder if they have called Ted Lasso yet.
Or Roy Kent
I wonder if Brian Barnes is in a position to come back short term as interim until they can find a suitable permanent (as permanent as college coaches can be anyway) coach to fill the position. Finding a head coach at that level in October isn’t going to be easy.
He’s currently an associate head coach at NC State, so, seems unlikely he’d leave there in October to go back to Notre Dame.
Kate Kovenoc, Barnes’s assistant coach at ND for many years, has turned around the women’s program at Brown.
These Alpha coaches need to remember it isn’t the 1990s. You are seeing them “retire” or “resign” all over the place. That’s because their behavior is a walking lawsuit and we don’t need to put up with it.
Kudos to ND for getting rid of toxic masculinity.
So what part of the program are you in?
No serious athlete wants to swim for a Beta
Don’t you coach 12-year olds? Super weird thing for an age group coach to say.
The fact that this has so many downvotes worries me