Coach of the Year Jack Bauerle

Although University of Georgia (UGA) swimming coach Jack Bauerle is being honored for the fourth time as the CSCAA Coach of the Year (1998, 1999, 2000, 2005), he's much more excited about his team's performance in the NCAA championships.

"It's the first time in history that a team has ever won all five relays," Bauerle said. "That's 200 points right there."

UGA won the 2005 NCAA Division I Women's Swimming and Diving Championships, set the pool and NCAA Meet records with a time of 3:13.56 in the 400-yard medley relay. "It was a great championship for the kids," Bauerle said. "It's always nice to win, and I tell the kids that it may feel good now, but it's going to feel even better in ten or fifteen years."

While the Georgia team has always swum well, Bauerle said this year they "just clicked at the right time." The team this year scored more points than any other team since 1993.

Bauerle gives a lot of credit to his coaching staff. "We have a terrific staff — they've all been here for a while so the constancy of the staff helps."

It doesn't hurt that the team is full of talent. "We've got great kids with good leadership," he said. "At the beginning of the year, we had a group of seniors who were very driven when they arrived. When you come in second three years in a row, the kids can tend to get down and out. But our kids instead were hungry to win."

An example of the tremendous leadership on the team is 2000 Olympic gold medalist Samantha Arsenault. "A lot of her goals were satiated with the Olympics," Bauerle said. "But her whole focus this year was a team championship. When the focus is on the team instead of individual achievement, everyone wins."

As far as training goes, Bauerle likes to make sure everyone's accountable every day, and he and his staff stress doing something positive each day. "Even when you have a rough day of training, if you can be pretty good, it will have a big effect on you mentally and physically at championship time."

Program Emphasis

The Georgia program emphasizes consistency in training and long-range goals. Bauerle also said that he encourages his athletes to take care of themselves in and out of the pool. "That includes good rest and good eating," said Bauerle.

"Taking care" includes the coaching staff too. According to Bauerle it's important to keep the sport in perspective, putting emphasis on academics and having goals in other areas besides the sport. "The sport does stop at some point," he said. "It's also important to spend time with your family every chance you get. And that's at all levels."

And to what does Bauerle attribute his great success as a coach? "Taking good kids who are dedicated to the program and their school, being firm with them and making sure that your team aspirations don't exceed your swimmers. That was easy for me, because they wanted it as much as I did."

Bauerle believes in "begging, borrowing and stealing" from other coaches for ideas. "A lot of coaches know much more than I do, so I call a lot of friends that coach to get ideas. We've got a great system in place, one that will make the athletes successful if they follow it, but we also like to change things up and keep them fresh for kids who go through a four-year program."

Facility and Equipment

Where does facility and equipment figure in the success equation? Bauerle gives a lot of credit to the new video boards from CTS in Gabrielsen Natatorium. Installed in 2004 before the Southeastern Conference Swimming and Diving Championships, the new boards have a spectrum of 1.07 billion colors.

"We have one of the prettiest pools in the country," Bauerle said, "and we wanted display equipment that matched it."

In addition to their eye-appeal, Bauerle stated that the new boards are very easy to operate and extremely reliable. "We're hosting the Women's NCAA Championships next year, so we wanted a first-class timing system in our first-class pool."

"The most important thing about the system is that we can count on it," Bauerle said. "CTS is very helpful and they always have people available. They even stop by in the summer when not much is going on, and they don't leave you hanging after you have the equipment. And they're easy to work with — as we've traded things back as we've upgraded over the years, CTS has always made it very easy to work with them."