Northwestern Hires Margaret Howe And Jacob Siar As New Assistant Coaches

On Monday, it was announced that Margaret Howe and Jacob Siar would be named assistant coaches for the Northwestern University swimming and diving team starting in the 2023-24 season. They join recently-hired head coach Rachel Stratton-Millis as new additions to the program this past summer.

Howe had previously been the associated swimming head and diving coach at Providence College from 2016 to 2023. Prior to that, she was the head coach at St. Joseph’s College in Maine during the 2015-26 NCAA season, where she led her team to a runner-up finish at the GNAC Conference Championships and helped them produce their first-ever ECAC Championships qualifier. In addition, Howe swam collegiately for Boston College from 2006 to 2010.

Siar was the associate head swimming and diving coach and men’s recruiting coordinator at Army-West Point from 2017 to the conclusion of the 2022-23 season. In his time at Army, the team had five consecutive second-place finishes on the men’s side and three second-place finishes on the women’s side at the Patriot League Championships. In addition, the Army men beat Navy for the first time in a dual meet during the 2022-23 season when Siar was on staff. Siar helped recruit several top male swimmers to Army, such as Kohen Rankin, a SwimSwam “honorable mention” for the class of 2022; as well as Johnny Crush, the #10 recruit in the class of 2024 and the first non-Ivy League mid-major recruit to get ranked top ten by SwimSwam.

Northwestern will see a myriad of coaching changes in the following months. Former associate head coach Andrew Hodgson was named the associate head at Alabama this May, while assistant Kim Williams left the program to join Cal’s coaching staff in April. In addition, head coach Katie Robinson left Northwestern in June to become the associate head coach at Stanford.