The Auburn Tigers swimming and diving program is Auburn University's representative in the sport of swimming and diving. The Tigers compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association(NCAA) Division 1 and are members of the Southeastern Conference(SEC). The program started in 1932 when the pool was in the basement of the gymnasium. The program had to telegraph their timed results to other schools and compare as the pool was too small for competitions.
The Tiger's first national champion was Scott Spann Sr, who won the 200m Individual Medley in 1978. The women's team became a full NCAA sport in 1982. David Marsh was hired in 1990 and he would make Auburn into a national powerhouse.
Under Marsh the program has won a combined thirteen NCAA national championships. The men have won eight (1997, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009) while the women have won five (2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, 2007). David Marsh stepped down at the end of the 2006-2007 season. He was replaced by former Auburn, Texas Longhorns and Stanford University head coach Richard Quick. The Tiger men won the 2009 National Championship, the 8th for the men and 13th total for the program. In May 2009 assistant coach Brett Hawke was promoted to Co-Head Coach to run the program in consulation with Quick. On June 10, Coach Quick died after a six month struggle with brain cancer.
Auburn has regularly been represented in the Olympic games, with a University record sixteen swimmers at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games where five Auburn Tigers won a record thirteen medals. At the same Olympics, Kirsty Coventry won her seventh Olympic medal to replace Auburn alumnus and NBC swimming commentator Rowdy Gaines at the top of the Auburn roster of Olympic medallists. Also in the Beijing games César Cielo Filho became the first Auburn swimmer to win an Olympic gold medal in the 50m Free Style event.
Read more about Auburn Tigers Swimming And Diving: History, Facilities, Men's Swimming and Diving, Women's Swimming and Diving, NCAA National Team Championships, Auburn Swimmers in International Events
Famous quotes containing the words tigers, swimming and/or diving:
“Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one’s inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother’s grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“A worm is as good a traveler as a grasshopper or a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought and frost by boring a few inches deeper.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)