Nebraska Hires 2019 WAC Diving Coach of the Year Landon Marzullo

The University of Nebraska has announced 10-time All-American diver Landon Marzullo as the program’s new head diving coach.

The move is the latest in a Power 5 diving coach shakeup that has dwarfed even a very active swim coaching carousel so far this summer.

Marzullo most recently was the head diving coach at the University of Wisconsin in the 2019-2020 season. He was there for only one year before moving to Las Vegas, where his wife received a job offer.

Before that, he spent 3 seasons at UNLV, which included being named the 2019 WAC Diving Coach of the Year when freshman Tazman Abramowicz won WAC titles on 3-meter and platform events, becoming the program’s first NCAA qualifier in more than 30 years.

After not coaching during the COVID-impacted 2020-2021 collegiate season, Marzullo will be back in the Big Ten next season at Nebraska. He replaces Natasha Chikina, who led the program for 16 years but left the program this off-season to take over at another Big Ten program, Rutgers.

The program change coincides with the departure of Abigail Knapton, the most-decorated diver in program history. Knapton announced last week that she would use her bonus year of NCAA eligibility, awarded to all athletes who competed in the 2020-2021 season, to follow Chikina to Rutgers.

Knapton last season was the Big Ten Champion on platform and 1-meter and the runner-up on 3-meter, and at NCAAs finished 8th on platform and 3-meter. Her platform finish made her the first Nebraska swimmer or diver to be a four-time first-team All-American in the same event, and her two Big Ten titles made her the program’s first-ever Big Ten Champion in diving.

All of this comes under the backdrop that Nebraska doesn’t even have a diving platform, and that she had to travel to Iowa to practice.

In just one season at Wisconsin, Marzullo didn’t have much chance to impact the Badgers’ program. They only scored 52 diving points in that one season, although that was still far more than the 29 they scored the year before his arrival.

Nebraska only sponsors a women’s team. At UNLV, he coached the first Rebel women’s diver, Myka Fielding, to the NCAA Championships in more than 20 seasons.

Marzullo got his first taste of collegiate coaching as a volunteer assistant at Ohio State in 2012-13. He left OSU to work as a high diver for Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines from 2013 to 2015, performing multiple times per day on the three-meter, 10-meter and 17-meter platforms.

Marzullo, who was the Big Ten Diver of the Year at Indiana as a freshman in 2008, spent his first two collegiate seasons with the Hoosiers. He was also the Big Ten Freshman of the Year and the 2008 Big Ten Diver of the Championships after winning conference titles on the one-meter and three-meter springboards and adding a fourth-place finish on platform. He also took fourth on the platform at the 2008 NCAA Championships to claim first-team All-America honors for the first time in his career, while adding top-16 national finishes on both the one and three meter boards. Marzullo took fifth on platform for the Hoosiers at the 2009 NCAA Championships.

He transferred to Florida State following his sophomore season in Bloomington. He was an All-ACC Diver for the Seminoles in both 2010 and 2011. As a senior, he was the runner-up in all three diving events at the ACC Championships, before taking seventh on the three-meter board at the NCAA Championships to claim first-team All-America honors.  He closed his career as a 10-time All-American overall, including four first-team All-America awards. He was also named to the 2011 World University Games Diving Team, earning his best finish (4th) on the three-meter synchronized event. He earned his bachelor’s degree in criminology from FSU in May of 2012.

Prior to his collegiate career, Marzullo was a six-time junior national champion and captured gold on platform at the 2005 Pan Am Junior Championships. He was a five-time U.S. National Team choice, and he twice qualified for the U.S. Olympic Diving Team Trials. He also finished second on the one-meter board at the 2011 U.S. National Championships.