Purdue head swim coach Dan Ross dropped an unofficial announcement this morning that Purdue will be hosting an “all star meet” between the Big Ten and ACC on November 9th-11th. Ross also added that the official announcement of the meet would be coming in 2 weeks, where we’ll get more specific details on the meet.
for the first time ever the ACC and BIG swim and dive teams having an all star meet and Purdue us first ever host Nov 9-10-11 2018. we go to ACC venue 2019
— Dan Ross (@CoachDanRoss) June 1, 2018
Ross mentioning that the meet will be hosted by an ACC school in 2019 indicates that this meet may become a yearly tradition. While it’s not the exact same thing, there are several Track and Field invites that include only Big Ten and ACC teams. Although it’s not all-stars of the Big Ten versus all-stars of the ACC, these invites have been around for a while, establishing a tradition of Big Ten vs ACC competition in Track and Field.
The seeming re-rise of the ACC in swimming programs fueled by high profile coaching changes and good recruiting will certainly make this meet an exciting one to watch in November. The ACC has seen a lot of coaching changes just in the last few months, such as Mark Bernardino heading to NC State, Austin Surhoff heading to Virginia, and Sergio Lopez heading to Virginia Tech.
High profile coaching changes have been happening in the ACC for a couple years, with perhaps the most noteable coaching change in the country for last season turning out to be Todd DeSorbo becoming UVA’s head coach. DeSorbo inherited a successful women’s team, although it’s prospects for the 2017-2018 season were uncertain, given they had graduated one of the best senior classes in the country, including Leah Smith. With Louisville going into the ACC Championships as the favorite, the Virginia sprint squad exploded onto the scene, leading to a convincing team victory. DeSorbo also inherited a men’s team that had fallen on hard time to say the least. He brought them up from finishing 6th at the ACCs in 2017 to 3rd in 2018.
Virginia is not the only ACC program to see improvement this past season however, but rather it was seen throughout the conference. Louisville saw some of its highest NCAA finishes in school history this past season, while programs like Notre Dame and Duke cotinue to steadily build year after year.
The Big Ten has also seen its share of coaching changes going into the 2018-2019 season, such as Yuri Suguiyama becoming Wisconsin’s head coach, and Mark Hill leaving Indiana, a gap which was filled by Kirk Grand.
NU had a change up too.
Love that the photo for the story is an IU swimmer. (Purdue and IU are archrivals) Go Big 10!
Not much of a rilvary in Swimming.