Top Candidates For Florida Head Coaching Job(s)

It’s already been a wild season for NCAA coaching changes, and that was even before yesterday’s bombshell: that Gregg Troy would be retiring from collegiate coaching after 20 years at the University of Florida.

In the day since the news broke, we’ve heard a number of rumblings about his potential successor(s). While there’s no official word on any of this, we’ll do as we did with Auburn’s high-profile opening and pass along the whispers we’ve heard about the future of the Gators – both frontrunners in the coaching hire and some big rumblings we’ve heard about a structural change to the program.

Split Men’s and Women’s Programs

This is the biggest possibility we’ve heard in the wake of Troy’s retirement. Troy has had success with both the men’s and women’s teams, but over the past three years, it’s been clear the men’s program is on a higher trajectory than the women’s team. We’re told that Florida is strongly considering splitting its men’s and women’s teams with two different head coaches – a unique development in an NCAA where more and more programs have begun to combine their genders under one head coach.

That means that Florida might be looking for two coaches from this list, rather than just one.

Anthony Nesty & Jeff Poppell, associate head coaches at Florida

The most likely option for a split program at this point looks to be promoting the team’s top two assistants to take over the head coaching roles. Nesty was a standout swimmer at Florida and is already enshrined in the Gator Athletic Hall of Fame. He’s been with the Gators for 20 years and is probably more likely to take over the men’s job. Poppell is relatively new to the program, but was previously with the Bolles School (where Florida hired Troy from in 1998) and was the head women’s coach at Arkansas for six years. He appears more likely to take over the women’s side of things in Gainesville.

Lars Jorgensen, head coach at Kentucky

Athletic directors do tend to keep an eye on the conference in these matters, and Jorgensen has been making a name for himself at Kentucky since 2011. He was also a standout swimmer at Tennessee. He’s previously head coached for Toledo’s women’s-only program and has had most of his success at Kentucky on the women’s side, particularly in backstroke, where Kentucky has become a factory of high-level performers.

Sergio Lopez, associate head coach at Auburn

Lopez’s name is going to keep coming up in connection with high-profile openings until he takes one – if he takes one. More and more, it’s starting to appear Lopez might prefer being in an assistant coaching role, though there’s no guarantee he remains at Auburn when that school announces its new head coach. Lopez also coached at Bolles (same as Troy pre-Florida) and has a good lay of the land in Florida recruiting-wise. He’s had more high-profile success on the men’s side with his coaching of future Olympic champs at Bolles.

Stephanie Williams Moreno, assistant coach at Georgia

Another SEC assistant, Moreno has been at Georgia for six seasons in a coaching capacity, and was also an associate head coach at Ohio State. She’s currently only an assistant at Georgia, and in the coaching succession plan, sits behind three associate head coaches who have been with Georgia for 11, 15 and 37 years. Moreno competed under her maiden name, Williams, at Georgia during the early 2000s and has stayed almost entirely in the SEC over her career – coaching with Missouri for three years before her four at Ohio State.

Gary Taylor, associate head coach at NC State

Taylor is another name that is going to keep coming up for head coaching vacancies until he takes one. The NC State associate head coach has previous Florida ties – he was the distance coach at Florida State for four years and has also coached the Dynamo Swim Club in Georgia. He’s been at NC State for six years, and Florida may be tempted to give him a shot after how well former NC State assistant Todd Desorbo has done in just one year at Virginia.

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Donald Gibb
6 years ago

Keep it in the family!
Anthony has been successful in every way as a representative of the Gator Nation both in the pool and on the deck.
Outstanding example for young people and an ambassador for our sport not only domestically but worldwide.
He has paid his dues and his loyalty should be rewarded.

Coaching
6 years ago

Jeff Poppell is by far the best choice for the job. He’s a younger version of Coach Troy. If it ain’t broke don’t try to fix it!!!

Max
Reply to  Coaching
6 years ago

Lol just because he sucks up to Troy doesn’t mean he’s like him.

Aquajosh
6 years ago

I think Poppell is the biggest question mark. He didn’t do much at Arkansas or in the year he’s been at UF. Why would you give him the keys to a legacy program?

Your staff is: Nesty, Jungbluth, Martindale-Stancil, and another coach who would be primarily a women’s coach. I.E: Steph Moreno, Tanica Jamison, Jaime Ellis.

Raiders
Reply to  Aquajosh
6 years ago

Clearly have no idea what you are talking about it especially if you saw Arkansas before he got there. Not to mention what he accomplished as Head Coach at Bolles. And why wouldn’t you make Martindale-Stancil the primary women’s coach?

Jakeswim1955
Reply to  Aquajosh
6 years ago

I have had the pleasure of working side by side with both Anthony Nesty and Jeff Poppell and known them for over 20 years. The best thing for the Florida program is for Anthony to be the men’s head coach and Jeff to be the woman’s head coach. In addition if you want to keep your incoming freshmen recruiting classes intact that should be the coaching staff!

Baldwin
6 years ago

Frank. Comfort.

Stan Crump
Reply to  Baldwin
6 years ago

Now that would be interesting!

Brutus
Reply to  Baldwin
6 years ago

Dr. Gary Hall. Sr. The man is a GENIUS. He can coach rings around everyone. Why are schools not jumping at this man???

Coach
Reply to  Brutus
6 years ago

#1 – Does Gary Hall even want to be a college Head Coach? Seems like he has a pretty good thing going right now with the Race Club. Way less stress.

#2 – Has he ever coached in the NCAA before? ADs are hesitant to hire coaches with no NCAA experience.

#3 – There is a whole lot more to being a successful college coach than being able to “coach rings around everyone.” Being a clinic/small group style technician/teacher is nowhere near the same skill set as being a collegiate head coach of a combined program, especially a major one such as UF. These aren’t mutually exclusive, but being good at one doesn’t mean you’ll be good at the other.

Spagetti
6 years ago

I know a lot of people on the team and I’ve been hearing Quinn Cassidy is one of the big guns

Spagetti
Reply to  Spagetti
6 years ago

Lots of downvotes. Won’t be hating when my inside scoop proves to be true

Sum Ting Wong
6 years ago

Those girls are happy Florida scored a point at NCAAs. With a better coach they might score 2 next year .

swamfan
Reply to  Sum Ting Wong
6 years ago

they scored 3 points… and all of them were from Sherridon Dressel

PowerTower
6 years ago

I have been given some top-secret information that Coach Jake from Liberty is definitely in the running for this position.

His only request of the administration at University of Florida… Is they all read his new book

@JakeShell
Reply to  PowerTower
6 years ago

17.63…UF certainly doesn’t need my advice!

Ethan
6 years ago

I wonder why no one is talking about Greg Rhodenbaugh for any of these jobs. He has done a tremendous job at Missouri

bob
Reply to  Ethan
6 years ago

Has he ever hinted that he want’s to leave Mizzou? He has a good gig.

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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