The Tulane women’s swimming & diving team is in search of both a new assistant swimming coach and a head diving coach.
The positions previously held by John Sirmon (diving) and Kosuke Kojima (assistant swimming coach) are both now unoccupied. Sources tell SwimSwam that Kojima was fired from his position, while Sirmon says that he resigned from his position.
Kojima served as the program’s assistant coach for four seasons, before which he spent a year as a volunteer assistant at Michigan. Prior to Michigan, he spent eight years as the head coach and a further three-and-a-half years as an assistant coach of the Counsilman Center Swim Team in Bloomington, Indiana.
Kojima, who has a Ph.D. in Human Performance from Indiana University, also taught undergraduate classes at Tulane.
Prior to coming to America, he attended Chuo University in Tokyo. There he was a swimmer specializing int he 200 IM, where he ranked 29th in the world in 1998.
Sirmon spent three seasons at Tulane. Prior to that, he spent three years with the Carolina Diving Academy and two years as the head diving coach of the Hoover Dive Club in Alabama. Prior collegiate experience came at Birmingham-Southern College also in Alabama.
Tulane sophomore diver Paige McKenzie finished 6th on platform at the 2022 AAC Championship meet after finishing 7th in 2021. Her 226.50 at the 2022 AAC Championship meet is the best score in program history.
The Tulane women finished 3rd out of 5 teams at the 2022 AAC Championship meet, behind Houston and SMU but ahead of Cincinnati and a revived East Carolina program.
The program has faced challenges, including its on-campus pool being closed since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020. Two of the team’s best swimmers, All-American Lilly Byrne and AAC runner-up Christiana Williams, have both announced plans to transfer next season. The program does have reinforcements coming next season, though: Isabella Lojewski will arrive in the fall with times that already rank her among the best swimmers in program history.
SwimSwam has reached out to both Tulane head coach Leah Stancil and Kojima for more information about the departures, but neither has responded.
Waiting to hear Coach Stancils comments regarding this situation. Interested to hear why a seemingly outstanding coach (according to the comments) was let go.
Kosuke is an incredibly kind, professional and hardworking coach. All of the athletes love and respect him. While the program will miss him dearly, I know that he will land at a program that embraces his ability to connect with the athletes instead of feeling threatened by it. Kosuke is head coach material!
Kosuke is an incredibly kind, professional and hardworking coach. All of the athletes love and respect him. While the program will miss him dearly, I know that he will land at a program that embraces his ability to connect with the athletes instead of feeling threatened by it. Kosuke is head coach material!!
Interesting to see such a high turnover of support staff and student-athletes in a program led by the same head coach…makes you wonder.
She had the same assistant coach for all four seasons she was there. I’m not sure I would consider that “high turnover”
Actually, she will be on to her third diving coach and third assistant coach. The assistant coach that was here before her left when she got the job.
Yeah I don’t think you can saddle her with that one. 98% of assistant coaches leave when the head coach changes – that’s just part of the game.
Regardless of coaching staff, over 15 swimmers have left the program in four years. -TUSD Parent
fair enough. But diving coaches have to work under the head coach too, so saying that she has had one assistant coach over 4 years is misleading. It is swimming and diving after all.
I’m sure many leave when they don’t have a pool open on campus as well.
I’m with you. Too many people trying to pin dirt on this coach when there’s nothing there.
Maybe you should listen instead of invalidating concerns. This is a dangerous trend in collegiate athletics, especially with the concerns surrounding student-athlete mental health.
Newsflash TUMOM, we all got mental health concerns and I am not trying to invalidate a single one. No one has detailed any real dirt on this coach, including yourself. You do seem to want to place blame on the coach for the student-athlete mental health, or whatever, without including a single fact.
You want a good conversation on mental health? How about being a coach without a pool? These students will get their degrees and move on. How about the coach struggling to support their staff, families, etc with out a pool? Who is invalidating who now?
Way to kick a person when they are already down.
You forgot to mention that this is all coming off a Covid year and this particular coach just finished chemo and a scary emotional time for her family. It’s one thing to disagree with a personnel decision. That’s normal. It’s another thing to take personal digs on a public forum under anonymous name(s).
That takes kicking a person when they are already down to an entirely different level.
Wishing Kojima luck on his next endeavor! Seems like a smart guy!
Disappointing news; I wonder why the program is experiencing such extreme turnover rates. Hopefully the team finds some steady ground to stand on soon.
Kosuke ran the entire program and was severely undervalued and under-appreciated. He, alongside the other assistant coaches and athletes, endured years of mistreatment from Stancil. It is pretty clear that she just couldn’t handle having someone that the athletes respected more than her on her coaching staff. Kosuke is a kind, professional and incredibly intelligent man who will be an amazing addition wherever he may land. While the program will miss him desperately, I am glad he is able to move somewhere where is hard work will not go unnoticed.
Coach Stancil has done an excellent job at leading this team through a season filled with immense amounts of adversity. The team had one of the greatest performances in school history at AACs which resulted in numerous school records and first place finishes. The Administration need to understand that the pool should be at the forefront of their minds and construction needs to start ASAP.
Majority of those record breakers were recruited by Katie Robinson. Stancil walked into a program that was ready to groom and she did nothing but cause problems and mistreat the swimmers. That aligns with Tulane Athletics as a whole.