North Carolina Adds NC State’s Jenny Keim Johansen as Head Diving Coach

CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina, May 22. TWO-time U.S. Olympian and veteran collegiate diving coach Jenny Keim Johansen was named Monday as the new diving coach at the University of North Carolina as announced by Tar Heel head swimming coach Rich DeSelm. Johansen joins Carolina from NC State University where she had served as the diving coach since 2008.

Johansen replaces Kevin Lawrence, who had been the diving coach at Carolina since 2002 after previous stints at Kansas and St. Cloud State. Lawrence is retiring from coaching to join the U.S. Peace Corps overseas.

“We are thrilled to add Jenny to our staff as the UNC diving coach. When we learned that former coach Kevin Lawrence was electing to retire, we knew we wanted to hire the best coach possible to help take our program to a new level,” said DeSelm. “Jenny is one of the top coaches in the country and has coached divers to NCAA and ACC championships. Her coaching credentials and personal experience as an NCAA champion and U.S. Olympian are clear indicators that our divers at North Carolina have a bright future under her leadership.”

Johansen represented the United States at the Olympics in both 1996 in Atlanta and 2000 in Sydney, Australia. She is a 2002 alumna of the University of Miami where she was an honors graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.

“I am very excited to join the Tar Heel family,” says Johansen. “The UNC swimming and diving program has a long and rich history of success and I am excited for the opportunity to be a part of its future.”

Johansen recently completed her fourth year as NC State's diving coach after joining the staff in August 2008. She came to Raleigh after serving as the assistant diving coach at Duke for one season.

From the outset Johansen's divers at NC State excelled at a high level. In 2009, Kristin Davies collected the first national championship indiving in school history by taking the platform diving crown at the NCAA Championships. Davies, an All-America and two-time All-ACC performer, was also named ACC Women's Diver of the Year and ACC Swimming and Diving Scholar-Athlete of the Year in 2009.

In 2010, Hannah Hopkins won the ACC platform diving title and earned All-ACC honors. Kirstyn Shepler picked up All-ACC hardware in platform diving while Hopkins was also named All-ACC in three-meter diving.

In her four years at NC State, 11 Wolfpack divers qualified for the NCAA Zone Diving Championships and two Wolfpack divers earned nods for the NCAA nationals, both earning All-America achievements.

While an undergraduate at UM, she won the NCAA championship on the three-meter board and platform in 1999 and 2000 and was a three-time All-America selection for the Hurricanes from1998-2000. She was inducted into the University of Miami Sports Hall of Fame in 2010.

Prior to her tenure at Duke, Keim Johansen served as the head coach of Liberty Diving, a club team out of La Salle University in Philadelphia where she was an assistant coach, from 2005-07. She has worked with several different diving academies and camps across varying capacities for many years. She is currently the owner of American School for Diving (ASD) which she and her husband, Drew Johansen, founded in 2007.

Keim Johansen and her husband Drew, the diving coach at Duke University, are the proud parents of one daughter, Lina Mei.

The above article is a press release submitted to Swimming World Magazine. It has been posted in its entirety without editing. Swimming World offers all outlets the chance to reach our audience by contacting us at Newsmaster@swimmingworldmagazine.com. However, Swimming World reserves the right to choose what material is posted.

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