Northwestern Plans To Combine Men’s, Women’s Programs With New Coach

Northwestern University will combine its men’s and women’s swimming & diving programs under one new coach. A job opening for “Director of Swimming and Diving (Men’s/Women’s) is already listed on the school’s site.

Observers could already see hints of that intention earlier this spring, when both the men’s and women’s head coaches resigned within two days of one another – women’s coach Abby Steketee on April 11 and men’s coach Jarod Schroeder on April 13. At the time, the school said it was “exploring all options” with regard to combining the programs.

Dual-gender combined programs have been on the rise in the NCAA lately, and Northwestern is the fourth Big Ten program to combine in the past 7 years. Minnesota combined its programs under Kelly Kremer in 2011, Michigan under Mike Bottom in 2012 and Ohio State in 2017 under Bill Dorenkott.

Northwestern was previously one of just two teams in the Big Ten to have separate men’s and women’s programs. Purdue remains the only Big Ten school with separate programs, the men under Dan Ross and the women under John Klinge.

Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Penn State, Iowa, Michigan State and Northwestern will now all field combined programs. Nebraska, Rutgers and Illinois only field women’s teams with no men’s swimming & diving program offered at those schools.

There’s no word yet on the coach who will eventually lead Northwestern’s program.

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Boise St Recruit
6 years ago

Jeremy Kipp the now ex-Boise St coach is your new Director of Swimming and Diving!

WildcatBob
6 years ago

Kipp is in!!!

CATS
6 years ago

Don’t sleep on Andrew Sheaff

Snardog
6 years ago

JOHO

Emma
6 years ago

GARY TAYLOR!

Coach
Reply to  Emma
6 years ago

Alexis Keto

Wondering
6 years ago

Can Dean Farris coach women too? We are about to find out…

anonymous
6 years ago

Great news! It was concerning that the worst was happening: the popularity of cutting swim and dive entirely or just the men’s.

EIE
6 years ago

Winchester from GW! He has done wonders with their combined program over the last 3 years.

Coach
Reply to  EIE
6 years ago

Word is he’s the new coach at TCU

About Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson

Jared Anderson swam for nearly twenty years. Then, Jared Anderson stopped swimming and started writing about swimming. He's not sick of swimming yet. Swimming might be sick of him, though. Jared was a YMCA and high school swimmer in northern Minnesota, and spent his college years swimming breaststroke and occasionally pretending …

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