Monty Hopkins to be Inaugural Head Coach for Thomas More College Swimming

monty-hopkins

Monty Hopkins, who coached at the University of Cincinnati for 25 years, will be the first head coach of the Thomas More College Division III swim team in Northern Kentucky. That team is scheduled to make its competitive debut for the 2018-19 season.

Hopkins coached the Bearcats from 1989 to 2014 after swimming for the school in the 1970s. He has also coached at club teams in Ohio, California, Texas, Kentucky and Arkansas and was an assistant college coach at Ohio State and LSU before taking the reigns of Cincinnati.

Hopkins has coached club since departing Cincinnati almost four years ago, but he admitted that he was itching to get back into the college ranks.

“I’m really excited about starting from scratch and seeing where we can go from there,” Hopkins told Swimming World. Getting back to college is exciting for me. Everybody knows where their strengths lie, and I think that’s my area.”

Hopkins is starting no swimmers on the team, but he’s hoping to build a roster of up to 20 female and 20 male swimmers for the first season. He explained that he’s looking to give athletes a chance to swim in college that they might otherwise not have.

“One of the things that we’re definitely going to look for are people that want to be in college but maybe aren’t being recruited by a Division I school. Northern Kentucky area, there are a lot of swimmers, so now more swimmers are getting a chance to swim in college,” he said. “

“The swimmers that come in initially, hopefully they’ll get to swim four years, and when they’re done, they’ll get to say, ‘I helped build that.'”

thomas-more

Thomas More has a student body of about 1700 but approximately 50 percent of the students are on a varsity sports team. The school announced the addition of a women’s and men’s swimming and diving program in January. Along with a a men’s volleyball team, the school will be up to 26 varsity sports.

 

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

Welcome to our community. We invite you to join our discussion. Our community guidelines are simple: be respectful and constructive, keep on topic, and support your fellow commenters. Commenting signifies that you agree to our Terms of Use

2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Charlie Lownes
6 years ago

Atta boy Monty!!!

Tim Grubb
6 years ago

Chris Billingsley, Ty Grubb

2
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x