Texas A&M’s new Director of Swimming Blaire Anderson has continued the remaking of the Aggie coaching staff for next season with the announcement of Jamie Lew as an assistant swimming coach.
Lew joins associate head swim coach Wes Foltz, assistant swim coach Duncan Sherrard, assistant swim coach Allyson Sweeney, head diving coach Jay Lerew, and assistant diving coach Jeff Bro on the Aggie staff for the 2024-2025 season. While the diving coaches return, all of the swim coaches are new this season after A&M combined the men’s and women’s programs under Anderson’s leadership.
Lew comes to College Station after spending the last three seasons at Indiana. He was a volunteer assistant for the 2021-2022 season and spent the last two seasons as the program’s Director of Operations.
Prior to that, he spent two seasons at mid-major power William & Mary where he coached the distance swimmers and helped lead the men’s team to its sixth straight CAA Championship. Among the team’s distance swimmers during his tenure was Elizabeth Intihar, who won the CAA title in the 500 free in 2021, Lew’s second season there.
Prior to that, Lew began his coaching career as an age group coach with Crimson Aquatics in Boston from 2015-2019 while also serving as a volunteer assistant with the Harvard men’s team during the peak of Dean Farris’ career there.
Lew was a four-year member of the Union College swim team, earning All-Academic honors each of his last three seasons. He set lifetime-bests in the 50 free, 100 free and 100 fly at the conference championships his senior year. He graduated from Union in 2015 with a degree in biology.
Both A&M teams finished in the top 16 at last year’s NCAA Championship meet. The men placed 16th, two spots lower than a season before, while the women were 14th, a big leap from a 25th-place finish a season prior.
Look, Jay Holmes wasn’t the perfect coach and he seemed to lack the ability to develop swimmers over the majority of his career, despite his excellence in recruiting…but it seems like at best, A&M has made a lateral move with this coaching staff. At worst, a big step backwards. Allyson is a phenomenal coach, and I’ve heard great things about Blaire. But I think this team is doing a poor job of trying to duplicate what Texas is doing.
Jamie is a really nice guy and cares a-lot about his athletes, but I really hope that he got a-lot more experience coaching at IU.
As an athlete during his tenure at W&M, his inexperience crafting workouts and inability to give technical feedback really showed. I hope its a case where once he has a guiding hand and some experience, he’s improves drastically. If he’s the same coach he was at W&M, I feel sorry for those athletes.
Great coach, even better person. Congrats Jamie!!!