Why They Coach: Andrew Grevers

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PM: We always start with the same question. What sports were you involved with as a kid?

AG: "Growing up, it's funny, I think I was a little hesitant to get into sports right off the bat. My folks were able to talk me into AYSO soccer growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. I would say the first month or so I wasn't into it. And then I scored my first goal and, like, that was it. Loved all sports from that point on. I was nine, 10-year-old, 11, 12-year-old, I was doing soccer, baseball, I was doing track and field, volleyball, obviously swimming. Definitely went to a bunch of basketball camps, I did some tennis. I was really into just all athletics by the time I was probably about nine years old."

PM: Swimming tends to be a sport where it becomes hard to do a lot of other sports by about middle school. When did you start to focus in on swimming?

AG: "Really it was high school. Freshman year of high school I went to Warren High School and I did soccer. I did that for the fall sport and then swimming was a winter sport in Illinois. Did year round swimming with the club team during soccer, but that was the one time I did a sport outside of the pool. We moved to a new high school my sophomore year and I didn't even attempt soccer that year. Didn't even do it. Did swimming, did some water polo as something a little different, a little fun, in the spring, but truly committed to year round swimming by my sophomore year.'

PM: And there really isn't an off-season.

AG: "There's two. You've got your short course season and your long course season and you're lucky to get a week off after either one."

PM: Did you like swimming from the start or that's what you were better at?

AG: "Great question. I liked swimming because my sister, two years older than me, got to do it in summer league. My mom allowed me to come watch her at practice and I'm watching those other kids in the pool and I'm like, 'I can beat them. I can beat all of them. Why I don't I do this?' Next summer I'm signed up for swimming. My mom was a coach on that swim team for the first three years of my career. Probably six year old, seven year old, eight year old, something like that, just summer league with my mom as a coach and really started falling in love with it because I'd win. Who doesn't love winning?"

PM: So how far did swimming take you?

AG: "I swam collegiately and it was fun. Swam at Northern Illinois University and really started hitting my stride my junior year. Was voted captain, getting all geared up for my senior year and they end up cutting the program. NIU lost both its men's and women's swimming program my junior year. And if that wasn't tough enough, pretty much anyone that's a freshman or sophomore transferred away because they were only going to be able to honor our scholarships for one additional year, which worked out great for me because I'd have my senior year and then I could get fifth year aid. It was good, but I was nowhere near the level; my sister was an Olympic trials qualifier, my brother is a four-time Olympic gold medalist, even my mom when she was back in the Netherlands, she made the Dutch Olympic training team. So as far as my personal swimming success, it's really me living vicariously through my athletes. You know, living through Michael Chadwick, who's now a multiple world record holder. We currently have Nick Alexander who's a national team member. That's far beyond anything I accomplished as a swimmer myself. I did it because I was better than the majority, but I wasn't like the top."

PM: Swimming is not a sport where you ever think it will be a career. So at what point did you decide you wanted to coach?

AG: "So after they cut the program my junior year, a roommate and myself realized we still liked doing it and there were other people that wanted to get into it, so we were able to work with the rec center and start a club team. Leon, my roommate, was the president of the swim club and I was the vice president. We got this thing up and running, I think they gave us a budget of about $150 a year to make this thing run, which was if we wanted to go to an away meet, we could probably like rent a car with that money or something like that. But we got it up and running and quickly realized we didn't have any coaches. So we ended up taking turns writing workouts. It was really fun for me, at the age of 20 at the time, realizing that I could start being creative and write whatever I wanted as a workout. So that got the itch going. I got my first gig out of college, part time, working with a swim club, ended up spending three seasons there and right as I was about to get a job interview with Abbott Labs out of the Chicago area, I was offered the head coaching position of the club swim team at Northwestern University. It was called NASA Wildcat Aquatics. I was head coach by the age of 23 and I ended up doing that for five years. Basically it was a step, started with the University club team, got that itch going, then I did that year round swimming where I was the coach of those age groupers as an assistant, we were winning state championships at the time and that was fun. Next thing you know, I was running my own team and had incredible success."

PM: The Northwestern team, it was a club team through the school?

AG: "Correct. So the college coaches actually owned the club team and they hired me to run it for them. Then I was also able to volunteer coach with Northwestern at the time. My brother was swimming at that time with Northwestern so I was a volunteer coach while he swam."

PM: So the deal at NIU, were you making any money doing that?

AG: "No, no, no. That was just to get us pool time really. Because they did not have open swim hours really through the rec center. So in order to get pool time, we needed to start that club team and basically get granted access to the pool."

PM: You said you had an interview scheduled. If you hadn't gotten into coaching, you were planning on doing what?

AG: "It was gonna be sales at a lab. Marketing, sales. Really I was just about to start preparing for the interview. One of my friends had gotten me the interview and had held the job previously for two years. So he was gonna kind of give me the whole step by step cheat sheet to be successful through the interview process and I never even got to it."

PM: So what's the path from Northwestern to full time college coach?

AG: "Once I became head coach, that was my full time job. I took a club team of about 70 athletes and grew it to 200 where we were at capacity. We couldn't go any more. I took a team that maybe would end up like 30th place at the state championships where we were top four. We were winning state championships for the older kids, we were getting top two in the section, which included Wisconsin and Minnesota and we were getting second place. Really just tremendous success in a short amount of time and I caught the eye of coaches across the country and Greg Rhodenbaugh had known me through my brother, certainly followed my career, and ended up offering me a job at Mizzou. So 2010, out here, started my career here, been here for nine years."

PM: So you had no previous connection to Mizzou, it was a connection to Greg?

AG: "Right. It was Rhody."

PM: What's the breakdown of responsibilities on a swimming staff?

AG: "As assistant coaches we all have different responsibilities delegated. My first few years, I was doing some of more of the grunt work. You know, ordering food for the athletes, booking hotels, really working in apparel. The jobs that are time consuming and not very rewarding. Everyone goes through it, right? Everyone puts in their time. And as I progressed, started getting more high profile recruiting responsibilities, I ended up becoming the recruiting coordinator eventually. I moved from an assistant middle-distance coach to the lead sprint coach after two years. I was the lead sprint coach and really had held that role all the way through this season until I became interim head coach. Other responsibilities included just general, I guess, more responsibility within the team, with the athletes. Providing leadership, providing structure, being more of a role model. Truly, just making more connections with the athletes. So that just continually developed throughout the years honestly preparing me to do exactly what I did these last seven months."

PM: You mentioned recruiting. When you're coaching club teams, that's not a part of it. Is that a learning process?

AG: "It was. The lucky thing was when I got out here in 2010, I was single and eager to prove myself and really at that time loved recruiting. Not that I don't love it anymore, but I loved it because I guess it was fun talking to people that you'd never talked to before. Getting to know them, understanding how recruiting works and how to get a competitive edge in recruiting. I realized pretty quickly if you ask the right questions and you show the right attributes you can really pull ahead of a lot of schools. And I loved being on the road at that age too. Because again, single, eager to travel and rack up some miles and really get that face to face time with the student-athletes. Now I'm married, I've got a four-and-a-half month-old at home, I still love the recruiting aspect, but I'm not as eager to do it year round as I was a few years ago."

PM: Did you have opportunities over those nine years to go and take over a program somewhere else?

AG: "Yes, I did. I ended up getting a degree from Mizzou so now I proudly call it my alma mater. There's so much this University's done for me, there's so much that this city has done for me and my family, I've really come to love Columbia through and through. What a wonderful place to raise a family. I'm super excited about having the opportunity to raise a family here in this great part of the country and I'm really pleased with my decision to stick it out here. Super, super excited for what the future holds."

PM: Obviously you probably didn't foresee exactly how the last few months have unfolded and I'm not asking for specifics, but how crazy has the last few months been?

AG: "It's been about seven-and-a-half months and it's been, yes, to say crazy is an understatement. But the way the athletes came together, and the way this staff came together, is an experience I will value for the rest of my life. The athletes understand the importance of supporting one another more now than they ever have in their entire lives. We are losing assistant coaches, associate head coaches, to wonderful opportunities in their careers and I truly am happy for each and every individual and I know they're going to be incredibly successful, but the reason this team is solid and going to be successful no matter what is cause of how the athletes came together. I had a lovely opportunity to help try and give it a little direction and seized an opportunity where they were all getting behind one another and we had an incredible year. And we're set up for success moving forward. That's for sure. But, yeah, as far as challenges, normally having six different bodies attending to these responsibilities, whether it's administrative or coaching, and knocking that down to four, that was a big change. And me taking on a lot of responsibilities for the first time ever, not necessarily knowing what they were. Luckily I had a lot of support."

PM: I know the jump to head coach is always a big one. Was it even more eye-opening in a situation where the kids had a bomb dropped on them and you weren't thinking you were going to be the head coach. Did you have to figure it out on the fly and who did you lean on to do that?

AG: "Very quickly. I had wonderful assistance from the athletic department, but specifically Kim Bishop was very helpful. She was our sports administrator. She's going to be leaving us unfortunately this summer. But she was incredibly helpful, someone I can bounce ideas off on a regular basis. Then of course, my associate head coach, Mark Gangloff. We shared an office, constantly talking through every single issue every single day. And that was it. There was no day off. There was no mental day off. I had to be on 24/7 and just make sure every time anything arose, I just addressed it immediately. Talked to the individual, the athlete, the parent, whatever the specific situation called for, just make sure to hear them out and find out what we can do to make it better."

PM: Obviously you had a long relationship with Coach Rhodenbaugh. While he was suspended, were you able to talk through things with him and maybe get advice from him?

AG: "As far as the way that that was explained to us, we could talk to him, but we couldn't talk about work related issues. We could simply maintain the friendship or relationship we had. And it's been wonderful being able to just continue that relationship. Awkward in certain ways, but at the end of the day, Greg's been an incredible human being and a mentor to me and it's been wonderful being able to just talk to him. I wish I could have asked him a lot more questions about work. You know what's pretty impressive is how the network of head coaches in Division One swimming really is there for each other. I was able to tap into some great relationships with friends and get some advice on some issues when myself and Mark couldn't figure it out or myself and Kim couldn't figure it out."

PM: Did you view this season as an audition?

AG: "You had to. Absolutely. I knew as interim head coach that to a certain degree it was an opportunity to show what I could do as head coach. At the same time, I also knew this wasn't mine from the get go. I certainly hadn't implemented all my philosophies from the beginning. I needed to keep the ball rolling, so to speak, as far as what had been laid in place and I'm not looking to rewrite the book here or change things up dramatically, but I'm certainly going to have a few different strategies and philosophies to start off the fall."

PM: Do you have to be any different as a head coach than you were as an assistant?

AG: "You have to be different. You do. Sprint coach, I had the privilege and luxury of truly focusing on quality all the time. From the first stroke into the water to the last stroke of warmdown, we could take our time, be deliberate, make sure you're reinforcing perfect habits all the time and not really have to worry about getting a certain amount of volume in, a certain amount of aerobic training, aerobic capacity. As head coach, I have to take every single athlete into account. I have to know what the distance swimmers need, what the middle distance swimmers need, what the sprinters need and make sure they're all happy that they're getting their individual needs addressed. When it was just one group, it's easy to be focused on one particular style of training. Now I need to make sure everyone is being accomodated."

PM: Not specific to this job, what to you is the best part of being a coach?

AG: "It's been awesome, and it took some time by the way, because you have to do it for a while to enjoy this part of it, but it's so fun seeing what these people become in life. I love when someone reaches out to me two, three, four, five years after they leave the program and see they're happily married, maybe they have kids, what kind of impact they're having on the world through their jobs. For me, it's all about preparing them for the rest of life and that's what I've been saying for a while, but now I actually get to see what the rest of the life is starting to look like. It's really neat to see the people and what they're able to do. Swimming, I got into it because I was a competitor,. right? As an athlete, I wanted to win. And I had that competitive instinct and that was fun in the beginning. I remember getting so nervous for like a conference meet or NCAAs. And now, don't get me wrong, I get a little nerves going, but the truth is, it's more about, I get nervous more about making sure that we're getting them through year to year, getting them through graduation and seeing them succeed in life. That's kind of what gets me going now."

PM: The other side, what's the most difficult thing about being a coach?

AG: "I mean, it's challenging on you and your family. The time commitment is rather large and there's certain points in the season where I may be on the road three out of four weeks in a row. We have odd hours. The schedule can be relaxing at times, but you just never know when you're going to get a call to address something that's going on. You never know what that might be. I've just kind of learned over the years, just be ready at all times. But that is tough because sometimes you get a surprise that you just weren't thinking about and all you want to do is help these poor kids out with whatever's going on in life. You've just got to be ready."

PM: As a swim coach with a four-month old child, do you ever sleep?

AG: "Unfortunately, I'm proud to say that I slept a lot my first three months. Because this baby within a week was sleeping like ten hours in a night. Sometimes 12 hours in a night. I'm like, 'we got this thing. This parenting thing's easy. No problem.' Then we hit the four-month regression and now we're lucky to get six hours straight. Put him down to bed at 7:30, six hours later is not a good time to wake up. Then there's a lot of demands being a new head coach, having to kind of build the staff from scratch on top of swim camps, it's been tough. But the good news is swim camps are over and I'm ready to catch up on some Z's."

PM: This is probably tough to answer for someone who just started his head coaching career, but whenever it's all finished, what would you want people who swam for you to say about you?

AG: "I certainly hope that they think of me as somebody who had a positive impact on their life and cared about them as a person versus just an athlete. My goal, if you want to know my goal as a coach, is to create an environment where the athletes are eager to come to work out. And that's tough for the sport of swimming. You know that. For swimmers to want to be here for workout and practices, that's something special and that's my goal. If the athletes later in their life can say, 'Hey, I loved being around coach Grevers for those workouts, it was so fun going to those workouts,' I think that would be something really fun to be remembered for.'