After 32 years of absence, the Monmouth University Division I Men’s and Women’s Swimming program has been reinstated and has begun competing in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference for the 2015-2016 season.
The Monmouth Swimming program had a successful past. The natatorium on the University’s campus is named after the program’s previous coach Richard E. Steadman, who had 127 All-American Swimmers, and one future Olympic Swimmer, who was also awarded Man of the Year by the College Swimming Coaches Association of America in his time at Monmouth. Six members of the Monmouth University Hall of Fame were members of the swimming program as well as the entire 1974 men’s and women’s teams.
Fast forward three decades, Monmouth County native Matt Nunnally, will be coaching 23 swimmers in the newly restarted Division I program.
“I’ve been coaching D1 for 20 years. I did five years at Seton Hall as an Assistant Coach and then 15 years at La Salle as a Head Coach. Monmouth was attractive to me because of the potential I see in the program. When you look at the athletic department and how the teams are preforming, there’s a belief here that the swimming program can be successful,” Nunnally said.
Once Nunnally signed on, he had to find athletes willing to compete for a start up program. The recruits were found from three main sources; students already enrolled in Monmouth with swimming experience, the incoming freshman class, and students willing to transfer to Monmouth to compete. Two veteran swimmers transferred to MU for the upcoming season. On the men’s side is junior Sam Lynch, who was a State Champion from Ocean who competed for South Carolina last year. On the women’s side, is sophomore Anne Skimmons, who followed Nunnally from La Salle to Monmouth.
The teams had six weeks of practice before their first meet at Fordham on October 23rd. Most of those practices were spent working on fundamentals.
“Really just making sure they understood what they were going to be required to do in a meet because some of them didn’t have much competitive swimming experience, so understanding the process of the meet and then going through day to day and just preparing them for that. Mostly conditioning, you know, getting their fitness levels up higher, working on their technique, and also working in the weight room to get stronger,” Nunnally said.
The team was excited for the first meet Monmouth University has competed in, in 32 years and Nunnally was satisfied with the results.
“I thought it was great, there was a lot of positive energy. You know for everyone it’s sort of a benchmark in terms of where they are at this point in the season so it gives us something to build off of and something to use as a standard to compare where we go from here. But overall everybody gave great effort and tried hard, we’re super excited about it and overall I think it was a positive experience,” Nunnally said.
Sports Information Director for the Swimming program, Chuck Marvel, said, “It was the first meet in over 30 years, so obviously everybody was very excited and there was a lot of energy. We have work to do but it’s a nice start and we’re very excited for the rest of the season.”
The Hawks competed in 18 events over the course of the meet. High points in the historic meet came from Sam Lynch, who won the men’s 100-yard backstroke and 100-yard butterfly against Fordham and Fairfield. He also went on to win MAAC Men’s Swimmer of the Week.
Senior Kevin Moedt said, “I’m excited to get together as a team. The teams we just faced, they’ve been together for four years. We won a couple races tonight. It’s our first meet, but we’re going to go high up from here. I’m telling you, Hawks fly high.”
Nunnally said, “We’re trying to come back from what we learned in our first meet and try to work on the things we thought were weaknesses and need to improve upon those and also continue to work on our strengths. I think everybody learned a little bit in terms of what it’s going to take on this level and what they need to do individually to get better, so just taking the feedback from the first meet and then carrying that into the second meet and hopefully continuing that process as we go through the course of the season.”
The Hawks improved in their second meet when they faced Seton Hall on October 28th. The men’s team fell 97-83 and the women’s team fell 91-75. Standout performances came from Sam Lynch in the men’s 100-yard butterfly, Anne Skimmons in the women’s 100-yard butterly, Kaitlyn Negron in the women’s 100-yard freestyle, Mitchell Ianneillo in the men’s 100-yard freestyle, and Savannah Moley in the women’s 100-yard backstroke. All of those first place victories came back to back for Monmouth.
Nunnally said, “This meet was a great opportunity for the team to begin to see progress and time improvement from where we started the season. With many personal and season-best times, it gives us a positive feeling moving forward towards the MAAC Championships.”
PHOTO COURTESY of Monmouth Athletics
