The Arizona Sun Devils have announced that the team will not be retaining head swimming coach Dorsey Tierney-Walker for the 2015-16 season. ASU Vice President for University Athletics announced that a national search is now underway for a new head coach that is “the best fit for the program, university and community”, citing that the “athletics department, university and community expect our swimming program to compete for individual, conference and national titles and produce All-Americans and Olympians.”
“I have informed Dorsey Tierney-Walker that she will not be retained as the head swimming coach at Arizona State University,” the statement began.
Dorsey Tierney-Walker has been the head coach of Arizona State’s men and women’s programs as of May 2009, and represented just the second head coach in ASU’s history to direct both the men’s and women’s program. Dorsey Tierney-Walker was also the first woman to coach a men’s sport at ASU since the combined archery program was headed by Sheri Rhodes.
This year, the Sun Devil men finished fifth place overall at Pac-12s, while the women finished in seventh place. The women went on to tie for 34th at the 2015 Division I NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships.
Read the entire statement here.
I made a specific reply to Swish above, so please see that post, but to add on generally: to be fair to DTW, I feel that a reply has to be made to the comment about ‘running the men’s program into the ground’ – Keep in mind that when DTW was hired, the men’s team was already grounded, having been cut by the athletic department. Further, whatever progress that has been made in the men’s program since 2008 has been done without the ability to represent to athletes that the program was more than year-to-year (now this has been changed due to ASU’s initiation of endowments for all the aquatic programs, which is a huge move.) I would imagine that… Read more »
And I vote for roric. He is an amazing coach!
Hence why I transferred to uofa. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and the only reason why I came to asu at all was because I thought the coach was going to be mike chassen, who then resigned after I had signed. I gave the program a chance with her there, but asu can do way better with new coaches! Right on! Results will speak for themselves.
As a former swimmer of arizona state, it’s about time. She treated me horribly, I’m so happy about this.
There are a lot of great past Arizona coaches that should be considered
Roric Fink, Tim Bauer, Eric Hansen, Rich Murphy and many others
Not sure to the level department is supporting…..but if they ramped it up some does anyone else think this would be a great move back to the area for Roric as HC??
First that comment by swish is beyond laughable in regards to “legendary.” I swam for Eddie Reese and Kris Kubik at Texas, both would be considered legendary although Kris is the unsung hero and he likes it that way because the insiders respect him just as much as Ed. Now that that is addressed we can move on to the real discussion.
I do not have any insider information or knowledge of what DTW had going on at ASU but I want to point out multiple points as to why ASU should be Top 15 at NCAAs currently.
1. Weather
2. Facilities (Athletic Dept is as close as ever to being profitable and it shows with their… Read more »
What does “T town is nice, but way too hilljack for post kids” mean?
It means Tuscaloosa, AL is not as desirable of a location for most kids, compared to Tempe, AZ
So if we are going to state facts please include all! The article mentions two NCAA All Americans. In fact there were at least 6 that same year. Shannon Landgrebe, Kelli Kyle, Caroline Kuczynski and Cassie Morrice. Under coach Dorsey 11 all time school records were broken. Some of those multiple times. I would think it’s pretty hard to come into a program that had to be saved by Alumni and try to do much recruiting. I don’t know the numbers for the men’s team but I watched them grow under Dorsey’s watch. They have become more successful each year.
I wish Dorsey the best of luck in her next adventure and would like to say Thank You for… Read more »