On Monday afternoon, Duke University announced that recently retired swimmer Coleman Stewart would be the new assistant coach for the school’s swimming and diving team. This announcement comes less than a month after Brian Barnes, who was formerly NC State’s associate head coach since August 2020, got named head coach at Duke.
“I am thrilled to be joining Brian’s staff and Duke Athletics,” Stewart said. “Duke’s a one-of-a-kind student-athlete experience and the legacy of excellence is something our staff is looking forward to continuing and enhancing. With Brian at the helm, this program is going to grow at a tremendous rate, and I am so excited to be a part of it.”
In May 2023, Stewart announced that he would be retiring from competitive swimming to pursue “the other side of the deck”. He had an accomplished swimming career, which included breaking the short course meters world record in the 100 back in August 2021, being named onto several U.S. National teams, and winning bronze in the 100 fly at the 2019 World University Games. He also swam collegiately for Duke’s in-state ACC rival NC State from 2016 to 2020 and was the 2018 NCAA champion in the 100 back and 400 free relay.
“I welcome Coleman and his wife Olivia into the Duke family,” Barnes said of Stewart. “This has been a rewarding process for me. My goal is to surround this team with highly motivated ambitious coaches, but most importantly people of great character. After spending the past few years around Coleman, I am certain Duke Swimming and Diving is getting a quality coach and person.”
“Coleman’s swimming career went from a college walk-on to a World Record holder in the span of five years. His story is a perfect example of what can happen when hard work meets opportunity. I am excited to add a coach who has an elite understanding of technique and skill who has backed it up in record fashion.”
Duke’s swimming and diving program has seen a plethora of changes over the last year. In December 2022, Dan Colella died at age 60 due to complications with prostate cancer after spending 16 seasons as the Blue Devils’ head coach, and associate head coach Doak Finch served as the interim head coach for the remainder of the 2022-23 NCAA season. In May 2023, Barnes was hired, and now Stewart has followed.
Stewart joins a long line of former/current swimmers that have taken on assistant coach jobs at Power Five programs. Last Monday, Olympic bronze medalist Annie Lazor was named an assistant coach at Florida, and former Indiana swimmer Noelle Peplowski was named an assistant for the Hoosiers after her time with the team as a swimmer ended.
Yeah so getting all the support with no experience? Really?
I’d have hired Brad Kline for this position. Oh well. Good luck Cole Slaw!
Well, they get a bunch of coaches…
Congratulations Coleman! People are seeming to forget Coleman’s spent the last few years growing his uw kick clinic and coaching through that venue.
Also… Coleman was definitely not a walk on. Was a highly recruited swimmer out of high school. Not to dampen his incredible improvement at NC State.
“Walk on” technically just means that he’s not on scholarship. A bit sensationalized to make it sound better but should not take away from his incredible growth trajectory
You-know-who absolutely loves Venn diagrams. And her favorite this week?
The one where you take the “Coleman Hodges” circle” and overlap part of it with the “Melvin Stewart” circle. The resulting set of points in the intersection is known as “Coleman Stewart.”
Ta-da!
TLDR; Having swam professionally at an international level should be credited to some extent when being considered for an assistant coaching role (obviously probably not for a head coaching role).
It seems that the consensus is that experience gained having competed at a world class level shouldn’t necessarily be credited towards coaching experience.
My question is why not? Understandably, folks who have climbed the ranks possess various important skills such as conducting recruiting and doing admin work. However, they may not necessarily possess the experience of (materially different than knowing / being aware of) what is required to compete at a world class level.
Therefore, in the short term, it may be fair to say that these folks would make… Read more »
I agree. I was a very modest swimmer, but I was willing to pay my dues as an hourly club coach for a while before I started making enough money to actually make a good living. There have been a few former elite swimmers who have jumped ahead of me based on their swimming accomplishments, and I don’t really have a problem with that. I’ve always accepted that being an elite swimmer is worth more than a few years of working your way up as an hourly assistant.
Interesting difference between the comment section for this article and the one about Annie Lazor’s hire at Florida 🧐
That thought crossed my mind as well, although, there is also a pretty massive difference between the levels of the two programs. I wonder if the trend would hold if Stewart had been hired at Florida and Lazor at Duke.
I’m not entirely sure this is true, there were a lot of people defending Annie in the same way they’re defending Coleman. I personally hate both hires, but like I said in another comment, as long as there’s only one inexperienced hire I think it’s fine, the majority of assistants at a power 5 are learning and doing administrative work anyway. I just disagree with the whole “I was a great swimmer so obviously I’m going to be a great coach” mindset of a lot of commenters. There are a lot of great coaches that weren’t high level swimmers. Before Courtney was named assistant I’m pretty sure not a single coach at UVA even made NCAA’s and they seem to… Read more »
Check out the differences between this comment section and the comment section about Annie Lazor’s hire at Florida. Majority opinion in the comment section for Annie’s article was that she wasn’t qualified for that position. But here, there seems to be a lot of support for Coleman, even though he has about the same level of experience in collegiate coaching as Annie.
I wonder what the difference could be…. 🤔
Chromosomes?
The fact that duke isn’t as high level of a program as Florida is would be my first guess. But sure why don’t you bring gender into it
Congratulations, Coleman!