In the 127 years that athletics has been part of the scene at Missouri S&T, no program has enjoyed more success at the national level than the Miner swimming team.  Since the early 1970s, the Miners have won several conference championships, earned numerous All-America awards and had national champions in the sport.

One of the surest signs of success with an athletic program is continuity.

Dating back to 1953, a period covering 68 years to the present, Missouri S&T's swimming program has been guided by just four individuals.  Burr Van Nostrand was the first of those four coaches as he took the reins of the program and began building the foundation for the success that the Miners have enjoyed over the past five decades.

The swimming program was suspended during the period of time when the new swimming facility in the Gale Bullman Multi-Purpose Building was being constructed in the late 1960s, but when it returned, it essentially picked up right where it left off under the management of new head coach Bob Pease.

In his first season as head coach, the team had its first All-America performer in Rick Marshall as he finished fourth at the NCAA Division II Championships in the 100-yard breaststroke.  A year later, the Miners posted their highest ever finish in the Missouri Intercollegiate Athletic Association as they came in second place in a year where Marshall earned All-America honors again.   Then in 1974, the program finally had its breakthrough moment as it halted a run of three straight runner-up finishes in the MIAA by taking its first conference championship.

Under Pease, the Miners would win six consecutive conference championships beginning with that 1974 title and had five other teams come in second place.  In addition, S&T would record its first finish among the top 10 at the NCAA Division II Championships in 1977 – finishing eighth that season – and had two additional top 10 finishes during Pease's run as head coach.

At that point, it was like handing off a baton.  Pease turned over the reins of the Miner program to Mark Mullin – upon a recommendation Pease made to then-director of athletics Billy Key -- following the 1984-85 season and Mullin proceeded to lead S&T to a conference championship and an eighth place finish at nationals in his first season at the helm in 1986.  He would guide the program to seven additional conference championships and three second place finishes during his tenure, which ended with the Miners' highest finish at the time at the NCAA Division II meet of third in 1998.

After becoming the university's director of athletics in 1992, Mullin served in a dual role for six years as athletics director and head coach. But by the close of the 1997-98 season, after that third place finish at nationals, Mullin decided to move into the administrative role on a full-time basis.  In turn, he passed the baton again by elevating his assistant coach, Doug Grooms, into the head coaching position.

The success has continued under Grooms, with nine championships and four second place finishes at the conference level, 14 finishes among the top 10 at the NCAA Championships including a national runner-up finish in 2008 and the school's first national championship performances – now totaling six in all – in any sport.

So how did those coaches go about building and then sustaining the success that began decades ago?

"I think it's important that one, you have passionate people in charge of the program to keep it going," Mullin said.  "And I also think the fluidity of not having a whole lot of coaches really has helped the swimming program to be stable.  Everybody that has been involved has not only been passionate about swimming – each of them were also passionate about young people in the program being successful on the academic side as well.

"When we recruit students, we want to recruit competitive people," Mullin added.  "That's not just somebody who's competitive in the sport, but competitive in life, in the classroom, in everything they do. That's been the type of individual that has been recruited into the program throughout the years and we've been successful in getting those individuals."

Grooms gained his initial perspective of the S&T program when swam against the Miners as a student-athlete at Truman State and then got a first-hand observation when he joined the coaching staff in 1992.

"They were good back then," Grooms recalled of the competition with the Miners back in the late 1980s.  "They just seemed to have a different talent level than what we had.  So I already knew how good they were; Coach Pease got it going and Coach Mullin took it over and continued that.

"When I got involved in the program, it became really clear through my experience in both sports (Grooms also assisted the football program prior to becoming the head swimming coach) that we had to find the right student-athlete that fit here," he added.  "We needed to find the ones that were super smart who most likely wanted engineering and could handle both, wanted to be in a smaller town and in NCAA Division II and embrace all of those things."

Since 1970, when Marshall became the first Miner to earn All-America honors, Missouri S&T swimmers have recorded 507 All-America performances as 123 different performers in the program's history have earned at least one award.

The list of laurels is impressive, headed by the six national championship efforts that first came from S&T's 200-yard freestyle relay team of Dave Belleville, Sean O'Donnell, Josh Jolly and Mike Lach in 2001.  Three members of that group returned a year later to repeat as national champions – Bram Olson filled the spot of the graduated Jolly in 2002 – and that quartet took another title by winning the 400-yard freestyle relay on the final day of that meet.

The Miners had flirted with national titles in the three years prior to 2001, with their 400-yard medley relay team finishing second in 1998 and having third place finishes in freestyle relays in all three of those seasons.

"We had been close," Grooms said of the first national title.  "That 200-free relay was really only three sprinters and a backstroker that won that relay.  But we hit it when we had to at the national meet, putting forth our four best legs together when had to for us to win it.  It was awesome to do that and of course, to follow it up the next year with three of the same four guys to win the 200- and 400-free relays."

Missouri S&T got its first individual national champion in 2009 when Zlatan Hamzic captured the championship in the 200-yard breaststroke, then Tim Samuelsen (Stavanger, Norway/St. Svithun VGS) made program history as he became the first Miner to win two titles on an individual basis by winning the 1,000- and 1,650-yard freestyle at the 2018 national meet.

The Miners have also had nine second place finishes at the national meet and 27 third place efforts over the course of the last 50-plus seasons, where they have scored points on 50 occasions at the NCAA Championships and 21 times have finished among the top 10 overall.

Besides their opportunities to compete at the NCAA Championships, a number of Miner swimmers have also had the opportunity to compete at national and international-level meets.  Diver Jon Staley, who had three top-three finishes at the NCAA Division II level, earned the opportunity to compete at the Division I Championships after his second place finish in the three-meter diving event in 1986.

Jeff Kuta, maybe the most decorated S&T swimmer  during Mullin's tenure as head coach, participated in the United States Olympic Trials in 1992, while Hamzic competed at the World University Games in 2009.  Two recent S&T competitors, Miguel Chavez and Marco Flores (San Pedro Sula, Honduras/SERAN Private Bilingual School), swam for their native countries (Mexico and Honduras, respectively) at the FINA World Championships in 2019.  Flores also took part in the Pan American Games later that summer.

But the meat and potatoes of the program's legacy – which has had 123 All-America performers since 1970 -- has been the growth of the individuals once they arrive on campus.

"We've been able to get some pretty talented athletes, but honestly, there are so many stories of high school swimmers who got here, developed and took off," Grooms said.  "Those are the ones that at the end of the year you go, 'boy, I didn't see that one coming'.  It's really fun to see that development.  Once we started having a lot of success nationally, it made it a whole lot easier to get them."

If the success in the pool wasn't enough, the Miner swimming team has also excelled in the classroom over the years.  The Miners are consistently listed among the teams earning the College Swimming Coaches Association of America's Scholar All-America award and the program has earned 18 Academic All-America awards, the second-most by any S&T athletic program.

Three members of the program – Jack Pennuto, Bill Gaul and Keith Sponsler – have been selected as the Academic All-America of the Year by the College Sports Information Directors of America and Sponsler was named as the recipient of the Richard F. Scharf Paragon Award by the GLVC following the 2015-16 academic year.

Over the last 50 years, the sport of swimming – like many others – has evolved.  An example of that is when Marshall won the Miners' first All-America award in 1970, he did so with a time of 1:02.9 in the 100-yard breaststroke.   Moving ahead to 2021, Josh Umrysh broke the school record in the event earlier this month in the process of winning the Great Lakes Valley Conference championship with a time of 53.54 seconds.
 
"The evolution of the program really falls in line with that of collegiate athletics," Mullin said.  "Recruiting has changed dramatically.  Over the years, it has been more and more competitive to get those individuals that I refer to as competitive people.  If they're really good students and really good athletes, they're going to be very marketable. 

"The ability of swimmers, period, whether it's at the club level or Olympic or collegiate levels has increased in terms of the their speed that you can't pick up only from a regional area and compete against people at a national level," Mullin added.  "You have to look wider for those student-athletes.  I think it's always good for us because we're always going to be on the cutting edge here in terms of technology and the use of it – and that bodes well for this program."

"How do you find the one that doesn't want to be the small fish in the big pond of Division I and wants this kind of education?", Grooms said.  "We have to reach out and really try and find the right kids for our program.  I'm sure that's how it was in the '70s, I'm sure that's how it was in the '80s and it's still that way today.  But the key is finding the right fit of the type of student-athlete that desires our type of school and being the right fit for us -- and for them."

Since the program returned in the 1969-70 season after its brief hiatus, the Miners began a run that has since led to the 123 All-America performers, the 500-plus All-America performances, the 23 conference championships and the 21 top-10 finishes at nationals.

"I always sold in recruiting that we compete in practice," Grooms said.  "We want to have the best depth that we can have, so every day we are competing in practice.  That's how you get better.  Swimming is about racing.  If we create a great racing environment in practice -- however we create it – that's what makes you a better athlete. 

"I think that's probably one of the most important factors in our success is that we practice hard," Grooms added.  "Whether it's distance guys, sprinters, an off the blocks set, or just a VO2 set where everyone is going head-to-head, I create a racing mentality in practice, because that's how I truly feel you get better.  Our guys have embraced that for years and it's probably what has helped take our program to that highest level."