Daily Local News (West Chester, PA)
Longtime WCU coach Rudisill retiring
Rudisill retiring after building WCU into national powerhouse
WEST GOSHEN >> After three decades of waking up to an alarm at 5:30 in the morning, West Chester’s longtime swimming head coach Jamie Rudisill is looking forward to “getting up when I wake up.”
Approaching his 60th birthday, Rudisill recently announced his retirement from coaching, effective in August. Since the late 1980s, Rudisill has worked relentlessly to construct and maintain one of the most dominant athletic programs in Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference history.
“I am a terrible morning person,” he admitted. “I have to drag myself out of the bed, get some coffee in me and watch the news for a bit before I am even presentable to the (student athletes), or I’d be even more surly that they think I am sometimes.”
There may be, however, a catch to his plans.
“In the last four or five years, I’ve realized that if I spend more than about six or seven hours in bed, my back starts hurting to the point that it wakes me up,” Rudisill explained. “So maybe now I will be getting up in the dark, and I just won’t have anywhere to go.”
Rudisill has earned a little down time. He single-handedly built the WCU men’s and women’s teams into consistent Division II superpowers. The Golden Rams have finished among the top four programs in the country 10 times at the NCAA Championships under Rudisill’s tutelage.
He’s mentored dozens of All-Americans along the way, like Tess Hayward, who grabbed two fourth place finishes and a sixth at the 2017 NCAA Division II Festival earlier this month.
“The fun of it at this level is taking a good swimmer, who is really willing to work hard, and developing them into a national caliber swimmer,” Rudisill said. “Tess Hayward is a real good example of that.”
A senior, Hayward came to West Chester as a sprinter and left as a distance All-American.
“Jamie has pushed us to reach our fullest potential that some of us thought were impossible to reach,” she said. “Even when we doubted his methods, he would prove us wrong over and over again.”
The only head coach at WCU that wasn’t hired by longtime outgoing athletic director Ed Matejkovic, Rudisill authored a combined dual meet record of 331-136. But even more impressive was the staggering level of dominance in the PSAC: his teams have captured the last
30 conference titles dating back to 2006-07. The men have won 19 straight and women 11 in a row.
“Once we got it going, it kind of snowballed,” Rudisill said. “I think we are working with the most scholarship money in the conference, and I really believe West Chester is the best academic school in the conference and I know it’s the best location. So all of that together, we really should be on top.”
In all, 28 of his swimmers have won conference athlete of the year honors, including the men’s recipient in 10 of the last 11 years. Rudisill has been named PSAC coach of the year 16 times.
“Jamie has been one of the most outstanding coaches in any sport in Division II history,” said WCU football coach Bill Zwaan.
“I have known Jamie for 30 years and in that time he has had a profound impact on swimming in the PSAC,” added Bloomsburg head coach Stu Marvin. “His teams have set the standard by which all others are now compared.”
Rudisill is quick to point out, however, that it took the better part of a decade to guide West Chester up through the ranks and eventually into position as the Northeast’s premier program.
“I took the job telling friends that I’d give it a couple years; that I’d stay as long as we kept improving,” Rudisill recalled. “And we did. So I stayed. Pretty soon, it was 29 years later.”
A 1980 graduate of the University of Virginia, Rudisill was WCU’s first full-time swimming head coach. But in 1988, the program was in bad shape, with aging facilities and little direction.
“It had gone through a period of part-time coaches,” Rudisill said. “One told me he wasn’t allowed to have “His compassion for each swimmer is something that can’t be understated. If a swimmer is having a problem in, or out, of the pool, he goes out of his way to do whatever he can to help that person. He is a great person to talk to in any situation – for there is nothing he cares about more than the well-being of his swimmers. He will be missed greatly by the WCU swimming family. But, all of the great things he has done for hundreds of people will never be the key to the locker room that had the kickboards to train the swimmers. The football coaches had taken over the team room and the facilities had been let go. But the bare bones and the location was so good, so I knew we could get something going.”
While finishing up at Virginia, Rudisill started his own swimming lesson program. It was small but so successful it funded his final year in college.
“As proud of I am about the competitive stuff, the swim lessons were a love of mine,” he said. “I knew that model worked, so when I interviewed for the job here, I saw the opportunity to do it at a much larger scale. We have a six lane pool that is stand-able for teaching, then the deeper diving well for higher skill-level kids and then the racing pool for higher still.”
Over the years, Rudisill built it into the largest and most successful seasonal “Congratulations, Jamie, on an outstanding career at WCU. You impacted the lives of so many WCU athletes and did it the right way. Your teams prepared well, competed and raced with intensity, and did so with class and integrity.” swim lesson program on the East Coast. Now capped at 4,000 youngsters, the summer endeavor generates large sums that have been directed back into WCU swimming for scholarships, facility improvements and coaching assistance.
“The thing I will probably miss the most is being in the water with the toughest two-year-olds and getting them safe in the water in just a few weeks,” Rudisill said. “It is a good feeling. I’ve heard stories of kids that have saved themselves before their parents even knew they fell in.”
It also enabled Rudisill to bring top-notch talent to West Chester. Over 29 seasons he’s tutored five female national champions who have accumulated 18 NCAA titles, and four male champs who grabbed eight titles, plus three relay titlists. A total of 21 individual conference records and four relay marks are currently held by WCU athletes.
And he’s assembled a talented and experienced staff, starting with diving head coach icon Ronn Jenkins, who has been at West Chester for 44 years. Rudisill then brought in Scott Elliott (19 years ago), Henny Hiemenz (17 years) and Steve Mazurek (nine years).
Years ago, Elliott took over running the Golden Rams Aquatics Club, which is a competitive age group program. And Rudisill is hoping that Mazurek, his first full-time assistant, will be his successor.
“If I had been a Division I coach, I would have been doing it for 24-7 for 12 months – no down time,” Rudisill said. “That’s why I always liked this this job. About the time I was ready for a break with the college kids, then the little tiny ones would come in for lessons. And by the time I was running thin on nervous moms, the college kids would come back. For a long time, that kept me in it. There was enough variety.
“I will miss the kids so much. But the sorts of things I thought I’d get better at dealing with – like paperwork and bureaucracy – I was getting worse at with age. It was clear to me that that’s something I can give up.”
Rudisill and his wife, Janice, life in Westtown and have no plans to move. They have a son and daughter attending WCU and their eldest son just started teaching at Unionville High School.
“I love this area,” he said. “I am not a city guy but I don’t think I could live way out in a very rural area.
“I don’t know exactly what I am going to do. I know I’ll have no excuse not to get into better shape, and I used to cook in a restaurant so I may dabble at home with that. I do have a satellite lesson program, so I might start up a couple more.”
The only real guarantee is that he’s retiring the alarm clock.