Good news! The rumors have been confirmed! William Jewell is bringing college swimming back to the KC area in their move from the NAIA to Division II. Yay! And even better, they hired Mark Gole, who already has experience leading Truman State University one of the top teams in Division II! Hooray!
Waitaminnit... Bad News! Mark Gole starts there January 1st! Ummm... Isn't Truman supposed to be packing up for their Christmas training trip right about now? Does anybody know what in the heck is going on around here? It sounds like the administration is pretty hacked about Gole's departure and they might still be searching for someone to get their athletes through the season. The best place to get caught up in all the speculation and accusations is, of course, the collegeswimming.com message board.
Now back to some better news: college swimming is finally returning to Oklahoma. That's right, the state that raised Samantha Woodward and David Plummer hasn't had a college swim team in a long time, and Oklahoma Baptist University, just a short drive East from OKC in Shawnee is bringing it back. The OBU Bison are an NAIA program, and in their press release on collegeswimming.com they are saying all the right things. They want to bring students into their institution with activities that serve a positive relationship with academics and character building, while having a positive impact on student life. They are adding football, women's lacrosse and men's & women's swimming because they hope to make their university a better place. They are starting swimming in the fall of 2011. Yay!
Posted a link to this blog post on SwimUtopia, thank you for the great recap!
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One of my swimmers is at Truman and she was none too pleased
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