Wisconsin – Green Bay head coach Reed Robelot has resigned from his position to take over as the head coach of LSU-based Tiger Aquatics. Robelot spent 4 seasons as the head coach of the Phoenix, where he arrived after 5 years as an assistant at Virginia Tech.
The return to Baton Rouge is somewhat of a homecoming for Robelot – he was a 3-year letter winner on the LSU swim team and was named to the Scholar-Athlete Honor Roll each season from 1998-2002. After graduation he spent time as the senior assistant coach with Crawfish Aquatics while working on his master’s degree at LSU.
After Crasfish Aquatics, Robelot spent time as a volunteer assistant at Houston and as the head coach for Houston Cougar Aquatic Sports in 2006.
While Robelot’s salary at Tiger Aquatics was not available, in 2018 he was paid $48,025 by UWGB to be the head coach of a co-ed, Division I team, according to Wisconsin public records. That makes it one of the lowest-paid D1 head coaching jobs in the country. That program took a financial hit at the end of last season when the school eliminated “tuition waivers” for the swimming & diving programs.
Last season, Green Bay finished 5th out of 7 women’s teams and 3rd out of 6 men’s teams at the Horizon League Championships.
Tiger Aquatics, which is owned by LSU head coach Dave Geyer, is a USA Swimming bronze medal club. Reed’s brother Lyle is an assistant coach with the LSU varsity team.
Best wishes to you, Reed, on your return home. You will be missed.
After 7 previous comments without mention, let me be the first on here to congratulate Reed on his new position with TAQ!!!
The Wisconsin coach is actively tapping into his home state with one of the richest traditions in swimming in the country. Unfortunately, the MD kids have few in state options; fortunately for Wisconsin-Madison swim and dive.
This is a big warning to any mid-major conferences with swimming. You have the Horizon League that 3 years ago had swimmers placing in the top 8 at NCAAs….to now, they have had one program drop (winningest program at the school) and 4 of the 7 schools left have lost their head coach in just this off-season.
This story won’t receive a lot of feedback/comments, but you’d really think swim fans from the state of Wisconsin would look at this and see how poor the support is for the sport of swimming. This is exactly why the top recruits go elsewhere. Other than Beata, hardly anyone big has stayed behind at a UW school. Sad to see this. The UWGB program, at least the men, will be gone in less than 4 years.
Go packers though
I think there’s a big difference between a school like Green Bay that isn’t that popular of a school in general and the general mess Whitney Hite brought to Madison. I don’t think this is significant of the future of the UW Madison’s team at all.
No one is saying that this is going to impact Madison’s team. There is actually more than just Madison in the college swimming world. More than just the elite swim in college.
Wisconsin has an excellent young coach and staff that have made a point of building relationships with Wisconsin high school and club coaches. They also have beautiful new facility opening this coming school year and are doing well with the Wisconsin swimmers they’re getting. Hite turned off some coaches and that was damaging, but the situation you’re describing is either not true anymore or fading away. The support for swimming in Wisconsin, and at UW-Madison, is very strong.
Wisconsin has three D1 schools and the two mid-majors, GB and Milwaukee do get Wisconsin kids. Madison seems to be getting more now since the coaching change. Lots of D3 Wisconsin schools, both public and private, that are also doing well with plenty of Wisconsin kids on their rosters. What happened at GB is truly sad and unfortunate. It is a great school if you can get kids out there to visit; now with losing tuition waivers I fear for the future of the program. GB has a great swimming tradition and losing the program would be a huge loss to the Wisconsin swimming community.
Eastern Illinois is also currently looking for a HC. Div 1 and combined but salary around ~$35k is quite measly