Eastern Illinois University head swim coach Evan Sholudko has resigned his position “to pursue other professional opportunities,” the school announced last week. His departure comes after 2 seasons leading the Panthers and leaves the program without a head coach with less than 6 weeks to go before the start of the fall 2021 academic term.
Sholudko came to Eastern Illinois in 2019 from Assumption College, where he was the head coach of the men’s team for one non-competition season in 2018-2019. That newly-launched program swam its first varsity year in 2019-2020, after Sholudko’s departure. Prior to that, he spent a season as an assistant with the Assumption women’s program.
Sholudko is a 2016 graduate of Division I UMass-Amherst, where he was a four-year scorer at the A10 Championships.
At the 2021 Summit League Championships, the Eastern Illinois women finished 5th out of 5 teams while the Eastern Illinois men finished 4th out of 5 teams. While there was one fewer team in the conference during Sholudko’s tenure than there was before it, those are the same relative positions of their finish as the two seasons before his arrival: last for the women and second-to-last for the men.
The school doesn’t sponsor a diving program.
The EIU swimmers broke 7 school records in Sholudko’s tenure. Both programs were named CSCAA Scholar All-America Teams for the spring 2021 semester, with the men scoring a GPA of 3.16and the women pulling in a 3.65 GPA.
Sholudko has not yet announced what his new professional opportunity is.
Lewis University just announced Sholudko as the new head coach for men and women swimming.
Last I heard, eiu swimming had the smallest coaching salary in d1… Hard to blame coaches for not riding out a full career like Ray… EIU needs to evaluate how they are paying coaches without threatening to cut programs. I’ve seen a lot of fancy gear and upgrades to athletics which is cool but I’ll take my old used eiu sweats and the same coach for 4 years any day.
Bring Ray back.
The timing sure as hell sucks for the kids. Not a good look at all.
Man, that team has fallen far since Bos left. School won’t spend any money on the team so they can’t hold onto a coach for more than a few years and don’t have enough budget to recruit.
I don’t think you need a ton of money to recruit, but you do need to have someone responsive that can communicate. I’m not saying that Mr. Sholudko does not communicate, as I’m just making a general statement based on personal experience and those of my peers.
This years incoming class is far better than any recent classes and larger too. EIU can recruit..