If you read my post on Monday, ASU won their first Men’s NCAA swimming and diving championship after almost cutting their program in 2008. I wrote about how the team’s success was due to Head Coach Bob Bowman (who was Michael Phelps longtime coach) and Assistant Coach Herbie Behm, who was one of my daughter’s coaches at Utah.
Then within 48 hours of winning the number one spot at NCAAs, social media went wild. Announcements were made from the University of Texas that Bob Bowman was named their head coach to replace retiring Eddie Reese. That came out of the blue, because amidst speculation, nobody thought Bowman would leave ASU.
At first everyone was convinced it was an April Fools’ joke.
Next, ASU announced that Herbie was being promoted to head coach. Congrats to Herbie!
That pretty much made the changes for real. Not a joke.
Now the swimming world is waiting to see what happens next. Do swimmers follow Bowman to Texas? Or, do they stay at ASU with Herbie? Time will tell.
Here are a few photos from my walk yesterday and of blooms in our neighborhood:
Did you see or hear something on Monday that you thought was an April Fools’ joke?
What are some of the fun April Fools’ joke you experienced?
In case you haven’t figured it out. I’m on TEAM HERBIE! The one who came back to his home team for his dream job. The one who isn’t ditching out after of 48 hours of a team championship to leave everyone else behind for the next step up in his career. Or worried about the next legacy or career about all him.
My daughter graduated college and moved to Arizona for a job, before we did. She lived in Tempe for one year before moving to the Bay Area for a swim marketing job.
While our daughter was in Arizona, I loved to visit and spend time with her. We’d walk Waffles at the Tempe Beach Park where there is water and a walking bridge.
Once while we were walking across the bridge, a woman stopped us and asked “Is that Waffles?”
We were dumbfounded. Yes, Waffles had become a bit of a social media star. The marketing team at Utah posted him promoting swim and dive and he had his own Instagram account. But he was no “Doug the Pug.”
It turned out the woman was the wife of a swim coach from my daughter’s team at the University of Utah. So she actually knew Waffles and recognized him. Her husband Herbie Behm swam at ASU, coached at Utah and returned to ASU around the same time my daughter moved to Tempe.
Why am I bringing this up?
Since Wednesday last week, I’ve been watching NCAA Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships. I subscribed to ESPN+ to watch (now I’ll cancel because the swim meet is over.)
I loved watching the meet. It reminded me of being at PAC 12 swimming championships cheering for my daughter and teammates.
What was really exciting was that Herbie’s ASU team won their first NCAA championship in history, topping CAL Bears. So the two top teams were from the PAC 12 — during the final year the conference exists.
When Herbie swam for ASU in 2008, the school decided to cut men’s swimming. At the time, we had two swimmers from our Palm Springs club team swimming for ASU. I remember fundraising to keep the program open. In the end, parents and supporters prevailed by raising $1 million and ASU kept men’s swimming. But they had a hard time getting recruits to a program that could be on the chopping block at any moment. They were near the bottom of the pack at PAC 12s.
Flash forward to 2024 and they are the number one team for Men’s Swimming in the nation. How did they turn their program around? Bob Bowman. The school hired Michael Phelps’ coach in 2015 and he built the program from scratch and brought Herbie on board as assistant coach in 2018. Phelps lives in Scottsdale and he can be found on the deck and in the pool along with other Olympians.
Bowman is obviously an incredible coach. He attracts amazing swimmers like Leon Marchand, who is currently the number one swimmer in the world. You’ll hear his name a ton in Paris 2024 Olympics. Unfortunately, he’s from France and won’t be on the US team.
My daughter believes a ton of credit goes to Herbie who is an innovative coach and breaking new ground.
At NCAAs this year, so many records were broken. It was really exciting to watch.
With the PAC 12 dissolving, I’m worried about future Olympic sports like swimming. Travel to meets in other divisions may be cost prohibitive and impossible for student athletes. In PAC 12s the swim programs without swimming include my alma mater University of Washington, my dad’s University of Oregon, and I’m not sure what else. Men’s swimming isn’t the PAC 12, but more like the PAC 5 or 6 — and that was several years ago.
What do you think of ASU’s rags to riches story — from cutting Men’s swimming to being number one?
I like the concept of senior citizens living on campus with students. I learned about an apartment complex at the Arizona State University campus in Tempe in an article in the Wall Street Journal called “Who Let Retirees Move on Campus at Arizona State?” by James Fanelli.
It caught my eye since we live about 45 minutes from the campus.
From the article:
Senior citizens who moved into a pricey housing complex at ASU, once named America’s No. 1 party school, want more quiet, less loud music
Housing at Mirabella requires one-time fees that go from $440,000 to more than $1 million. Residents pay another $4,000 to $8,000 a month, which includes classes and meals.
Mirabella also is restricted to seniors. Residents must be 62 or older. It is one of the country’s few senior-living facilities set on a college campus, mixing older and younger generations by design. It hasn’t gone as well as hoped.
For the kind of money Mirabella’s 260 residents are paying, some are asking why they can’t get a little peace and quiet.
Some have complained about music that blasts late into the night. The vibration of bass notes has rattled the windows and walls of Sharon Murry’s apartment at all hours, the 72-year-old said. “That unrelenting bass thumping sound makes it difficult to concentrate or do anything else,” including sleep, she said in a court filing.
Like I said, I think the concept of living on campus and being able to take whatever classes you want would be an amazing experience as a senior citizen. But the noise of a dive bar across the street blasting EDM until the wee hours of the morning would be too much.
I should know. Our old house was across from what used to be a health retreat for middle-aged women (once called a fat farm). It sold to a hotelier who wanted to turn it into a resort with live outdoor concerts. Our windows shook. My kids would lose sleep on school nights. It was a nightmare. We went to the county courthouse because I found a law that said we were entitled to the peaceful enjoyment of our home. The liquor license got restricted and if we could hear the music in our house, they would get fined. So many fines and their license would get revoked.
However, this case is different than the hotel across the street from our old home. The senior citizens of Mirabella knowingly moved on to the kids’ territory. The judge is trying to work out a compromise.
What are your thoughts? Should the old folks have a right to demand peace and quiet on a college campus?
I am new to digital tickets and they stress me out. For example, this ticket is in my iphone wallet for a football game that was last weekend. I don’t know how the ticket got there. I talked about going with a friend who was coming from Palm Springs for the game. But, I decided against it and we’ll join them at a game Thanksgiving weekend instead. So how did this ticket end up in my “wallet?”
My first encounter with digital tickets was to buy five tickets for the football game above. I made a mistake and bought tickets to the ASU vs. Stanford game. When I transferred tickets to my friend (I was buying them for her and her kids and my husband and myself) she texted me back and said I bought the wrong tickets.
I said no worries that the Ticketmaster website said there were refunds. But then I read the small print and the refunds are only for when an event is cancelled. Period. I was able to list the tickets for sale on Ticketmaster. Fortunately, the tickets sold and I got my money back.
I bought tickets for my husband, me and a friend who lives down the street for the NFL Cardinals vs. Panthers game, which is Sunday. My husband has been a huge Sam Darnold fan ever since Sam’s USC days. He was supposed to be the quarterback for the Panthers this weekend, but he shattered his shoulder last weekend.
I bought the tickets a couple months ago but couldn’t access them. That stressed me out because they are expensive and I didn’t know if they existed or not. It’s so nebulous. I like paper tickets. Something solid in my hands that I can touch.
Our friend has pneumonia and we uninvited him to the game. Now we have an extra ticket. Since I successfully sold the ASU vs. Stanford five tickets, I figured I could sell our extra ticket. But if I can’t access the tickets how can I sell them? Today, I was finally able to access the tickets. My hands shook while downloading the Ticketmaster app and listing a ticket for sale. Perhaps it’s because I made a mistake on the first go around is why digital tickets make me anxious.
What are your thoughts about digital tickets? Do you like paper tickets better? Or are you savvy and fine with digital tickets?
State Farm Stadium, home to the AZ Cardinals and where I got my COVID shots.
