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?
