Gardner-Webb Hires Scott Teeters as New Head Coach

NCAA Division I Gardner-Webb has announced Scott Teeters as their new head swim coach. He takes over for Mike Simpson, who left the program after 19 years to become an assistant coach at the nearby University of South Carolina.

Teeters comes to GWU from Olivet Nazarene in Bourbonnais, Illinois, where he became the program’s first head coach in 2012. He quickly built that program into an NAIA power, with their men’s team finishing 3rd behind Keiser (Fla.) and SCAD, and their women’s team placing 2nd behind SCAD at the 2018 NAIA National Championship meet.

He was named the NAIA National Men’s Coach of the Year in 2014 and 2016 and the NAIA National Women’s Coach of the Year in 2014 and 2017. The men’s team won the 2016 NAIA National Championship, and both the men’s and women’s titles in 2017.

Teeters will start his time with Gardner-Webb against a familiar program: the same Savannah College of Art & Design squad that was one spot higher than his Olivet Nazarene teams at last year’s championship meet. The two teams will face off, along with the women from Georgia Southern, on September 28th in Savannah.

Gardner-Webb swims in the CCSA, a swimming-and-beach-volleyball-specific conference, where last year both the women’s and men’s teams placed 3rd at the conference championship meet.

Their biggest recent swimming success came in the form of sprint freestyler Nathan Lile, who swam at the 2016 NCAA Championships, finishing 19th in the 100 fly with a 46.26. That same year, he won the NCAA’s Elite 90 Award for the highest GPA among athletes who qualified for the NCAA Division I Championship meet.

Teeters is just the 2nd coach in program history (Simpson launched GWU’s women’s program in 1999 and men’s program in 2008). Prior to his time at Olivet Nazarene, Teeters was a club coach with the Oakland Live Y’ers in Rochester, Michigan, famously home of the Vanderkaay brothers. He’s also served as the head women’s coach at Eastern Michigan and Oakland University.

During his time at Olivet Nazarene, Teeters was also working as a head site coach with the Academy Bullets club team and as an assistant professor at the university.