By Phillip Whitten<\/p>\n
PALO ALTO, Calif., April 19. RICHARD Quick, Head Women\u2019s Coach at Stanford University and twice Head Women\u2019s Coach of the US Olympic Team, explained his decision to retire after 17 years at the school in an exclusive interview with SwimInfo<\/i> this afternoon.<\/p>\n
Quick, 62, whose Stanford teams won seven national collegiate team championships during his tenure from 1989 to 2005, said what it all boiled down to was \u201cwanting to spend more time with my family.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been thinking about retiring for the last five or six years,\u201d he said, noting \u201cI\u2019ve discussed it with you more than once.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to stress that the reason \u2013 the only<\/i> reason I am stepping down is to spend more time with my family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I was a younger coach and I heard older coaches say the same thing, I really didn\u2019t understand. Now that I\u2019m older, I understand completely.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a grandson who is 13 and a granddaughter who is 10. I\u2019ve only got a few more years to spend with them before they\u2019re grown up, and I want to be a much greater part of their lives. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf there were any way I could move them to Stanford, or vice versa, I would do so,\u201d he said. [All of Quick\u2019s family lives in Texas with the exception of his son, who lives in Los Angeles.] \u201cI have the most fun spending time with them and I just simply did not want to miss my grandchildren growing up,\u201d he said, referring to rumors that he was encouraged to resign from his post at Stanford.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel I have been blessed being able to have coached at Stanford. It is one of the greatest institutions of higher learning in the world and it attracts the best student athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he might have any regrets about his decision to retire, the Hall of Fame coach replied: \u201cSure. There\u2019s never a best<\/i> time for something like this. There will always be women I\u2019d wished I\u2019d coached.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the athletes Quick has coached are Jenny Thompson, Lea Loveless, Misty Hyman, Catherine Fox, Dara Torres, Tara Kirk, Shelly Ripple, Summer Sanders, KIrsten Caverly, Janet Evans, and many other storied names in the annals of American and world swimming.<\/p>\n
Quick concluded by saying he is involved in Stanford\u2019s search for a new coach to replace him. He also said that the Stanford Athletic Director, Ted Leland, indicated he will be hired as a consultant who will come to Stanford \u201cthree or four times a year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Phillip Whitten PALO ALTO, Calif., April 19. RICHARD Quick, Head Women\u2019s Coach at Stanford University and twice Head Women\u2019s Coach of the US Olympic Team, explained his decision to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,7,10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college","category-usa","category-world","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n