What is Happening with Arizona Swimming - Revisited

Back in May of last year, I wrote about how the storied University of Arizona swim and dive team had been struggling as of late. It was the end of the 2022-2023 swim season and they had just fired their two assistant coaches. They had finished fourth out of six and sixth out of eight in the Pac-12 Conference standings for men and women respectively, and placed 32nd and 18th at NCAAs for men and women, respectively. Now, a year later, their head coach Augie Busch has also (finally) been fired. 

A quick recap from my previous post: Augie was hired in 2017 from the University of Virginia where he was an assistant. Augie’s dad, Frank Busch, was head coach at Arizona for 22 years, where under his leadership Arizona won one NCAA team title, 48 individual national titles, and 31 relay national titles. Under Augie’s leadership, the team has had nowhere near those same results. This past season, the Arizona women had two qualifiers for NCAAs and scored zero points. On the men’s side, the team had eight qualifiers and scored 19 points (though 13 of those 19 came from one diver). 

Besides a slide in results, Arizona also had no shortage of drama under Augie’s leadership. They went through multiple assistant coaches and each departure brought rumors swirling around wondering what was really happening in Tucson. Augie was quoted saying the team was a soap opera. So now it seems the rounds of firing have finally made it to the top, which some were calling for more than a year ago. 

And as I said in my last post about this, the SwimSwam comment section (notorious for being absolutely wild) had a lot to say about Augie’s firing. Some commenters accused him of verbal abuse, not being in control of his own staff, and other issues. One comment that really stuck out to me is below:

“I have one personal story about this guy that I think people should know. My grandfather was terminally ill and in the hospital with only a few days left to live. I told Augie I would like to go home to be with him and my family before he passed. This man looked me dead in the eye and said “Well what if he passes before you get there?” - implying that I should choose practice over being with my grieving family…” - Former swimmer 

Again, these are just comments and are not fact checked at all. But the amount of negativity surrounding Augie, especially in the last few years at Arizona, suggests this firing was a long time coming. Since the firing, Arizona has hired a new head swim coach – Ben Loorz from University of Nevada Las Vegas. I sincerely hope he can bring Arizona back into its former glory. Seems like the program has been through enough.