By Cypris Wilkinson
The swim team at the University of Montevallo has only been around for about 3 years. However, it has been a long process on Coach Aaron Mahaney’s part. The first year consisted of all freshman and two juniors, the second year being COVID-19 and this year start of the end of COVID-19, the swim team has not had a completely normal season since the start of the program.
Mahaney first found out about the job when he saw a job posting online and then went through the interview process and was brought onto campus in Spring 2018 to start the swim program. This gave him a year before any swimmers were on campus to prepare the pool and start the recruiting process for the first ever UM swim team.
Mahaney said, “When I first found out I was starting the swim program, I was excited and nervous. Not many people get an opportunity to do that so I was excited for the opportunity, not just for me personally… but also having this unique opportunity that not many coaches get to ever experience to start something new, so I was definitely excited about that but also kinda nervous about not having many people to call upon to get advice from.”
Mahaney swam for Michigan State University and graduated in 2002, and then immediately began coaching after college at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, while he was training for the Olympic trials. He then spent some time coaching at the University of Hawaii before going on to coach at Pennsylvania State University, and then coached at SUNY Buffalo State College in New York, and then took a year off before ending up at the University of Montevallo starting a new swim team from scratch.
Mahaney’s coaching experience at other colleges prepared him for building this team but it wasn’t without its challenges.
Mahaney first came onto campus in 2018 and he said that that year was mostly preparing the pool and recruiting. “They hired me in 2018, so for the 2018 and 2019 school year I came in and there was nothing in the pool. The pool was here but that was about it… no starting blocks, no flags, no lane lines. So one of the big things that year was going around and setting up the pool and figuring out how it was going to look… and then the first class came in august 2019.”
However, it’s kind of hard to start a team that nobody knows exists. Mahaney said, “So the biggest thing was just announcing to the world that Montevallo now has a team. So I went into every database that I could get a hold of and basically sent out over 10 thousand emails… a lot of just generic emails going out, and at one point I had over 100 names on my board of people who had responded, and my goal was to get over 30 in the first year. We had 36 commits during the summer but 32 officially showed up the first day of classes. So we started off with 32, 30 freshman and 2 junior transfers.”
Recruiting for a first time team is not like recruiting for a team that has been around for awhile, “I knew being young and being new that it was going to be an experience for all of us but what one of the hurdles I didn’t realize was how much I needed upperclassmen… having the 2 juniors was a huge help,” said Mahaney.
Molly Hansen, a Junior, who was a part of the first class that was recruited said, “…being recruited to the swim team was like a leap of faith really, but I really liked the business school and that was kinda the last convincing factor to come to this school.”
The recruiting process for starting a team is a lot different, aside from the emails Mahaney sent, he also did some travelling, he traveled to meets and to certain people to convince them to come to the university of Montevallo. “During my recruiting year, I had more free time to travel, and spent some time in Texas with some friends while recruiting around the Texas area,” said Mahaney.
“Mahaney came to see me at the Southeastern Short Course Championships, after I had already committed, but him coming to see me just made me more sure about my decision in going to the university of montevallo,” Hansen said.
For nearly a year the Montevallo swim team had a pretty normal season, they had a lot of firsts and the team started to look like an actual team and the program was really coming together.
At the end of the first year, Covid hit. This brand new team was struck by COVID-19, and the team and the recruiting process didn’t change that much for this new team. “Ironically went back to how we had to recruit for the first year, when no one was here. For the second class we were able to have some visits and people were able to meet the team a little bit. But then when covid hit we went back to not being able to bring people onto campus… we relied heavily on virtual tours and we did a lot more online…” Mahaney said.
Now however for this upcoming class, recruiting has started to go back to normal, “it’s sort of a hybrid,” Mahaney said, doing some on-campus visits but still some online.
Hansen said, “When I first saw the pool, it was completely bare, and it was kind of hard to imagine everything put together but I really just trusted Coach Mahaney and took a chance.”
“Trying to sell a team that didn’t exist was probably the biggest obstacle, just talking about the vision and trying to explain to people what it’s going to look like…and then when that stuff starts arriving and the vision starts coming together,” Mahney said.
GOALS FOR THE FUTURE
Some of Mahaney’s goals for the team, “academically to be one of the strongest teams on campus, I focus a lot on the term, ‘student-athletes’, because they are students first. So just focus on academics first, and then I see us being top 3 in our conference and then eventually qualifying and being top 25 at NCAAs,” Mahaney said. He believes that this can be done in the next few years and despite all the obstacles he’s had to overcome has hopes for the future and is looking forward to continuing the journey of this team.
By Cypris Wilkinson
The swim team at the University of Montevallo has only been around for about 3 years. However, it has been a long process on Coach Aaron Mahaney’s part. The first year consisted of all freshman and two juniors, the second year being COVID-19 and this year start of the end of COVID-19, the swim team has not had a completely normal season since the start of the program.
Mahaney first found out about the job when he saw a job posting online and then went through the interview process and was brought onto campus in Spring 2018 to start the swim program. This gave him a year before any swimmers were on campus to prepare the pool and start the recruiting process for the first ever UM swim team.
Mahaney said, “When I first found out I was starting the swim program, I was excited and nervous. Not many people get an opportunity to do that so I was excited for the opportunity, not just for me personally… but also having this unique opportunity that not many coaches get to ever experience to start something new, so I was definitely excited about that but also kinda nervous about not having many people to call upon to get advice from.”
Mahaney swam for Michigan State University and graduated in 2002, and then immediately began coaching after college at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, while he was training for the Olympic trials. He then spent some time coaching at the University of Hawaii before going on to coach at Pennsylvania State University, and then coached at SUNY Buffalo State College in New York, and then took a year off before ending up at the University of Montevallo starting a new swim team from scratch.
Mahaney’s coaching experience at other colleges prepared him for building this team but it wasn’t without its challenges.
Mahaney first came onto campus in 2018 and he said that that year was mostly preparing the pool and recruiting. “They hired me in 2018, so for the 2018 and 2019 school year I came in and there was nothing in the pool. The pool was here but that was about it… no starting blocks, no flags, no lane lines. So one of the big things that year was going around and setting up the pool and figuring out how it was going to look… and then the first class came in august 2019.”
However, it’s kind of hard to start a team that nobody knows exists. Mahaney said, “So the biggest thing was just announcing to the world that Montevallo now has a team. So I went into every database that I could get a hold of and basically sent out over 10 thousand emails… a lot of just generic emails going out, and at one point I had over 100 names on my board of people who had responded, and my goal was to get over 30 in the first year. We had 36 commits during the summer but 32 officially showed up the first day of classes. So we started off with 32, 30 freshman and 2 junior transfers.”
Recruiting for a first time team is not like recruiting for a team that has been around for awhile, “I knew being young and being new that it was going to be an experience for all of us but what one of the hurdles I didn’t realize was how much I needed upperclassmen… having the 2 juniors was a huge help,” said Mahaney.
Molly Hansen, a Junior, who was a part of the first class that was recruited said, “…being recruited to the swim team was like a leap of faith really, but I really liked the business school and that was kinda the last convincing factor to come to this school.”
The recruiting process for starting a team is a lot different, aside from the emails Mahaney sent, he also did some travelling, he traveled to meets and to certain people to convince them to come to the university of Montevallo. “During my recruiting year, I had more free time to travel, and spent some time in Texas with some friends while recruiting around the Texas area,” said Mahaney.
“Mahaney came to see me at the Southeastern Short Course Championships, after I had already committed, but him coming to see me just made me more sure about my decision in going to the university of montevallo,” Hansen said.
For nearly a year the Montevallo swim team had a pretty normal season, they had a lot of firsts and the team started to look like an actual team and the program was really coming together.
At the end of the first year, Covid hit. This brand new team was struck by COVID-19, and the team and the recruiting process didn’t change that much for this new team. “Ironically went back to how we had to recruit for the first year, when no one was here. For the second class we were able to have some visits and people were able to meet the team a little bit. But then when covid hit we went back to not being able to bring people onto campus… we relied heavily on virtual tours and we did a lot more online…” Mahaney said.
Now however for this upcoming class, recruiting has started to go back to normal, “it’s sort of a hybrid,” Mahaney said, doing some on-campus visits but still some online.
Hansen said, “When I first saw the pool, it was completely bare, and it was kind of hard to imagine everything put together but I really just trusted Coach Mahaney and took a chance.”
“Trying to sell a team that didn’t exist was probably the biggest obstacle, just talking about the vision and trying to explain to people what it’s going to look like…and then when that stuff starts arriving and the vision starts coming together,” Mahney said.
GOALS FOR THE FUTURE
Some of Mahaney’s goals for the team, “academically to be one of the strongest teams on campus, I focus a lot on the term, ‘student-athletes’, because they are students first. So just focus on academics first, and then I see us being top 3 in our conference and then eventually qualifying and being top 25 at NCAAs,” Mahaney said. He believes that this can be done in the next few years and despite all the obstacles he’s had to overcome has hopes for the future and is looking forward to continuing the journey of this team.
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