Reed Fujan is climbing the coaching ladder from Alabama assistant to Louisville associate, joining the Cardinals’ staff under 21st-year head coach Arthur Albiero.
Fujan will serve as the second associate coach on Louisville’s staff next season along with Stephanie Juncker while Nick Zorn is slated to remain on as an assistant. The Cardinals lost associate coaches Bryon Tansel and Aaron Bell to the new Michigan staff under Matt Bowe this offseason.
Louisville is coming off a successful 2022-23 campaign that saw the women place 4th and the men place 13th at the NCAA Championships in March. The Cardinal women scored 288 points — the most in school history — and they return 279 of those points next season.
Fujan spent four seasons with the Crimson Tide as an assistant following a one-year stint as head coach at Division III St. John’s. A 2017 graduate of Notre Dame, the Minnesota native spent the 2017-18 season as a volunteer assistant at Indiana while former Alabama head coach Coley Stickels was the Hoosiers’ associate head coach. As a swimmer, he clocked the second-fastest 200 free time in Irish program history during his time at Notre Dame.
Fujan’s departure from Tuscaloosa means that the Crimson Tide will have an almost entirely new coaching staff under third-year head coach Margo Geer next season. Ozzie Quevedo became the women’s head coach at SMU, James Barber took a job off-deck with American College Connection recruiting, and Roman Willets left for Pitt. Geer hired Andrew Hodgson from Northwestern, Michael White from Wisconsin, and Jake Larson from Miami (OH) to help fill those gaps.
This summer, Geer received a three-year contract extension worth a base salary of $160,000 per year.
I’m sorry to see Reed go. I have much respect for him. Best Wishes!
It’s almost like coaches can’t wait to get out of there, that athletes are stuck and their parents are panicking. A confidence index score there for parents could be very telling. You can’t mask any of that with contract extensions. Make your bed and…
Parent of a Bama swimmer….the team along with parents are all excited!
Seems like the people freaking our the naysayers. Roll Tide!
As a parent as well. I am not sure that is an accurate statement. There are a lot of unknowns and uncertainity with in the program right now. They lost too many key coaches this past season, to honestly not be slightly concerned. If anyone thinks differently, must certainly has their head in the clouds. Ozzie, James and Reed were the only coaches to have individual NCAA qualifiers.
Time will tell how this season shakes out, but I am fairly certain we may finish under South Carolina and above Vandy by a few points and that’s hard pill to swallow.
Hoping for the best. Roll Tide!
The girls will definitely finish ahead of both Vandy and South Carolina!
SC has a very strong recruiting class and a ton of transfers. I would not count them out of the running. Also, the girls side has a ton of injuries right now, some may not be back for the season. The freshman are always hit or miss and really depends how they adapt to the training, lifting and school schedule. Usually takes some of them a year to adjust. We will revisit this in February. Like I said hopeful but very cautious and saying we will certainly beat SC.
I know a lot of the South Carolina transfer swimmers. Go back and check times. Our last freshman girls struggled with adapting to lifting and illness. Many were way off their best times. Excited to see their development this year. Not worried about South Carolina.
Rumor has it Trevor Maida from Wisconsin is going to Louisville
Boom
Full staff gone over there after 2 seasons. Yikes? Whoa? Interesting? No comment?
The college coaching carousel is incredibly maddening. The same coaches at different institutions almost every two years, seeing the same swimmers they recruited in different colors, telling them “wait, no, THIS institution is actually #1!” it’s wild to follow. That being said. Go Royals.
My favorite way to think about it is imagining a kid transferred to get away from a coach, and then BAM, they end up at the same school you transferred to
Or imagining a kid transferring to get away from a coach and choosing a new school partly because they get to work with a coach that recruited them to be in their group only to have the coach end up leaving once that student signs to transfer because they got an offer to coach at the institution the athlete came from because the coach that the student left to get away from actually quit even though the other coaches fought for them and their intentions for the program instead of the athlete who had been there longer than the coach and done more for the program. That would be funny.
Or imagining a kid transferring to get away from a coach and choosing a new school partly because they get to work with a coach that recruited them to be in their group only to have the coach end up leaving once that student signs to transfer because they got an offer to coach at the institution the athlete came from because the coach that the student left to get away from actually quit even though the other coaches fought for them and their intentions for the program instead of the athlete who had been there longer than the coach and done more for the program. That would be funny.
My head hurts
who takes his spot?
I applaud and appreciate the lengths that Swim Swam goes through to speculate on certain openings. One thing I think many of us readers are curious about, is who are the current assistants, outside the power 5, that we need to be aware of before they get their names in a Swim Swam headline for making the leap to the “big time”?
Any mid-major, D2 or D3 assistants really crushing it in their current positions, without getting much shine?
and head coaches too
I swam at meets with Reed!
Best of luck to him!
Sinking ship….???