With the standard July 1st turnover date, a trio of programs have hired new assistants with some pretty decent name recognition.
Richmond has hired Fernando Rodriguez as their new assistant under head coach Matt Barany. Rodriguez comes to the program after one season as an assistant at Colgate, three seasons as an assistant at the College of William & Mary, and two years as a volunteer assistant for the Athens Bulldogs Swim Club while earning his Master’s Degree.
Rodriguez, who is academically-fluent in Portuguese and English (he once held a job translating articles at the University of Sao Paulo), was a part of three Kenyon NCAA National Championship teams and a 7-time Division III All-American.
Rodriguez will also coach the Richmond-based Masters team.
New Mexico’s women’s program has hired Aimee Dunavant as their new assistant under Kunio Kono; she takes over for the resigned Crystal Forbes, who will take time to focus on her family.
Dunavant comes from Northern Colorado, where she was the coach from 2011-2013, where she coached 11 All-Conference swimmers, and an NCAA provisional “B” qualifier – big news at a small school. Before that, she was an assistant at Evansville from 2008-2010. Dunavant is an alumni of New Mexico, where she holds the 6th-best time in program history in the 100 fly. She is not a former Kono assistant, however; Kuno took over the program in June of 2012 and led his team to a 6th-place finish at the Mountain West Championships, which repeats their standing from the previous season.
New Mexico and Northern Colorado, Dunavant’s former employer, are annual dual meet opponents.
And finally, Peter Verhoef has been hired as an assistant at Queens University in Charlotte, as head coach Jeff Dugdale has been promoted to Director of Aquatics. The university felt that this position was vital with the completion of the university’s new Levine Center.
The hiring of Verhoef will further increase the tie-ins between SwimMAC Carolina and Queens. One of the University’s first hires was SwimMAC CEO David Marsh as a consultant when they added the program in the fall of 2011.
Verhoef is an assistant with the SwimMAC Team Elite program that had 18 athletes at the 2012 Olympic Trials. He was a great swimmer in his own right as an Olympic Trials finalist in 2004 and 2008 and a World Championship team member in 2005 and 2007.
“It has always been my passion to coach excellent young men and women to be better people through the lessons learned in the pool and I can’t think of a better place to pursue that passion than Queens University of Charlotte,” Verhoef said. “The opportunity to follow my passion of influencing young athletes to become outstanding adults matched with continuing to assist in impacting swimming at the Olympic level makes Charlotte an incredible place for me to be.”
Verhoef joins the staff as one of his star pupils joins the team. Queens University will welcome in the fall Matthew Josa, who finaled in multiple events at last week’s USA Swimming National Championship meet. He joins a men’s roster that finished 9th at the NCAA Championships last year (their women’s team was 10th). Josa is immediate program-changing recruit who could have swum at any Division I program in the country, but opted for this Division II program instead.
