American Swimming’s Biggest Goofball Turns Serious About Leading The Next Generation

This article was written by Karen Crouse and published on Sport & State, a new media company founded by Clay Travis that is built around sports, culture, original voices, and live conversation.

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SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — The cold call from a random job seeker was a rarity for Dave Collins, who has been at the helm of the Missouri State men’s and women’s swimming and diving program since 2012. But the identity of the caller was what really startled Collins.

On the other end of the line was the 12-time Olympic medalist Ryan Lochte, once the owner of multiple world records, the subject of magazine covers that ran the gamut from Time to Vogue, and the star of the short-lived reality TV show entitled, What Would Ryan Lochte Do?

“Is this for real?” Collins remembers asking after Lochte identified himself. “Am I being punked?”

It didn’t take long for Collins to recognize that Lochte wasn’t the goofball that he had read about over the years. And his overture wasn’t a publicity stunt by a celebrity down on his luck, but, rather, the seed of a redemptive story by someone who, in Collins’s words, had been “knocked down a few pegs.”

Collins was impressed by Lochte’s initiative. It didn’t surprise him that Lochte’s interactions with swimmers at the stroke clinics he described were impactful. He came across to Collins as mature and clear-eyed, barely recognizable as the person who owned up to recreational drug and alcohol abuse stemming from untreated depression and was emerging from an acrimonious divorce from the mother of his three young children.

“He had been humbled a little bit,” Collins said. “He realized he needed to start somewhere, and he was looking for someone to give him a chance.”

Although he didn’t have a staff opening, Collins decided he owed it to his program, a jewel among mid-majors, to figure out a way to bring Lochte aboard.

Roughly one month into his first-ever entry-level job, as Collins’s newest and greenest assistant, the 42-year-old Lochte looks and sounds like a man reborn. After a decade of being judged by his mistakes, Lochte is seizing this opportunity to leave behind his past and write a new chapter.

“I’m having a blast coaching,” Lochte said in a sit-down interview last week following a morning practice. “I’ve found my love and passion. This is what I’m meant to do.”

I hadn’t seen Lochte in five years, since he failed to make the Olympic team in the 200 I.M., his best event, at the U.S. trials ahead of the Tokyo Games. There was no trace of the down and defeated person etched in my memory from back then. In its place was someone vibrating with energy; a veritable wellspring of positivity.

Lochte said he decided to move to Springfield, where his fiancée, Molly Gillihan, grew up, after accompanying her on a couple of trips here to visit her family. He found the people unfailingly friendly and felt as if he had ample space to breathe amid all the parks, hiking trails and greenways. It was a world away from the Hollywood scene that, by his own admission, he got pulled into after the 2012 Olympics. “I lost myself,” he said.

Once he and Gillihan committed to relocating, he set about finding a job. Lochte said he researched the universities in the area, identified which ones had swimming programs, and reached out to Missouri State and Drury, which competes in Division II. Missouri State was his top choice, he said, because he aspired to get his “foot in the door,” as he put it, in a Division I program.

His base pay of roughly $30,000, with bonuses that could bump his salary to $40,000, is not the least bit off-putting to Lochte, who in his heyday in the 2010s was earning several million dollars a year through sponsorships.

“I don’t need the money,” Lochte said. His main source of income, he explained, is an entrepreneurial venture with a friend in finance to franchise existing swim teams across the United States (and, eventually, he hopes, the world), each fronted by an Olympian and backed by elite-level resources.

Lochte said his management is also in negotiations with Amazon regarding a podcast in which Lochte would be paired with another retired professional athlete named Ryan, whose name he doesn’t want to reveal, lest he jinx the discussions. Lochte said he made clear at the outset that he can spare only one day a week away from campus to record episodes because he is prioritizing his duties at Missouri State, which include writing the occasional practice and offering technical feedback on strokes and turns from his daily perch on the pool deck.

Collins was heartened to hear that. His main concern from the start was that Lochte wouldn’t take his responsibilities seriously or would quickly grow bored with his menial duties. So far, he said, those worries have proved unfounded.

“This is his first real job and I think he’s trying to make up for lost time,” said Collins, who added, “He’s very detail-oriented, but he also has this laidback surfer personality, which I think helps our swimmers more easily absorb what he’s telling them. He’s giving so much feedback to the athletes, and coming from a 12-time Olympic medalist, it’s having an impact.”

Take, for instance, streamlining, the art of reducing drag while increasing the efficiency of strokes and turns. “He’s taught us some things with streamlining that were not even in my vocabulary,” Collins said.

Lochte doesn’t downplay what he brings to the deck. “I have a gift,” he said, “and I want to share it with the younger generation.”

At a recent practice, Lochte said he wrote a set intended to focus on breath control. He stopped a swimmer who was not breathing every five strokes, as instructed, and called him out good-naturedly in front of the team. “Hey, buddy, can you count to five?” Lochte asked.

The abashed swimmer laughed and said, “Oh, yeah. I’m sorry, Coach.”

There are few more gratifying instances, Lochte said, than when a swimmer is able to make a correction based on his feedback. “When I see it click, I get freaking pumped up!” he said. “I’ll throw my arms up in the air and scream, “THAT’S WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT! NO ONE’S GOING TO STOP YOU NOW!”

The tendency for those new to coaching, Collins said, is to gravitate toward the high performers. Lochte is not like that. He has been quick to identify those who need help who might otherwise go unnoticed; the athletes who are invisible because they aren’t among the fastest or don’t speak up.

“The first few days, he was telling almost every kid something,” said Kayden Hedrick, a sophomore from New Orleans.

Smiling broadly, Hedrick added, “He’s been riding my ass a lot.”

Hedrick came to Missouri State as an Olympic trials qualifier and four-time MVP of his high school team. Like Lochte, he was coached by his father until he got to college. As a freshman, he was named an All-Missouri Valley Conference honorable mention selection.

Despite trimming time off his personal bests last season, Hedrick was disappointed not to qualify for the NCAA championships. When he heard of Lochte’s hiring, Hedrick remembered turning to his father and saying, “He’s going to help me get there.”

Eager to plug into Lochte’s vast experience and expertise, Hedrick asked Lochte if he could work with him on an afternoon when he doesn’t have class and the team is off.

Lochte’s response: “Hell, yes!”

Lochte believes he can relate to every athlete — good, bad, or goofball — because he has seen and done it all. As a lightly recruited freshman, Lochte said he struggled initially at the University of Florida. After his first meet, he was sent home by his coach, Gregg Troy, who told him to spend the weekend rethinking his commitment to swimming.

Lochte returned to campus with a renewed desire to be the best he could be. From that point forward, he said he made it a point to be the first in the water every day and the last to get out. He wasn’t the most naturally gifted swimmer, Lochte said, but he made himself into the hardest worker and the most technically proficient swimmer.

He is applying the same mindset to coaching. “His goals are through the roof,” Collins said. “How do you discount them when he’s a driven individual?”

So, what are Lochte’s coaching aspirations?

“My long-term goal is I’m going to be the best coach in the world,” he said.

Better than Bob Bowman who, has led two different programs, Arizona State and Texas, to men’s NCAA Division I team titles over the past three seasons? Who coaches the swimmer, Leon Marchand, who last year erased Lochte’s 14-year-old world record in the 200 I.M.? Who guided Lochte’s long-time nemesis, Michael Phelps, to 28 Olympic medals?

“Oh, yeah,” Lochte said, grinning. “I’m going to give him a run.”