Bryan Christiansen is the Head Coach at Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois. The University added Men’s and Women’s swimming in 2021 and ’22-’23 was their first season competing. This is the second time that Quincy has started a swimming program. In 2015, they added Women’s swimming but cut it in 2017 due to budget issues. Bryan seems confident that won’t happen again. Including men this time is a big reason why. The support seems to be in place with scholarships, a full coaching staff, and enough budget for things like power towers and a training trip.
But how does a college program start? In this podcast, Bryan takes us through the year of coaching before he started coaching. Most of that year was spent recruiting and building a roster. Luckily, he has some experience with transitioning a program. Bryan came from Frostburg State University in Maryland. During his time there, the program transitioned from DII to DII. That experience gave him some patience in this first season at Quincy.
That first season went well for the program. You could almost say it went better than expected. Freshman Wyatt Walsh dropped 6 seconds in his 400 IM and 4 in his 200 IM, down to times that would have qualified for DII NCAAs. The only problem was that the first-year program fell two swimmers short of the required roster number to send an athlete to NCAAs. A tough lesson but in their very first season, it was a sign that things are going in the right direction.
The program appears to be in a great place heading into season number two.