In the midst of his ninth season at the helm of the Pepperdine women’s swimming and diving team Head Coach Nick Rodionoff has already made his mark as one of the most successful coaches in any sport within Pepperdine athletics.
Time trials for this season preceding the PCSC Championships are set to take place January 31 at home and Rodionoff is hoping for continued success.
From UCLA to the sandy shores of Malibu Rodionoff began his career with the Waves in 1974 as an assistant coach for the men’s swimming and diving team. Shortly thereafter he helped create the women’s swimming and diving team which he took the head coaching reigns of in 2000.
Since being head coach Rodionoff has led Pepperdine to eight consecutive top-five finishes at the Pacific Collegiate Swimming and Diving Conference Championships. And with a tie for second place in 2008 he guided the Waves to their best finish in Pepperdine history.
Rodionoff also coached 36 high school All-Americans over a span of 33 years at Birmingham High School in Van Nuys Calif. before retiring in 1997. Shortly after his retirement the school built a new pool and re-named it after him in his honor.
With Rodionoff’s swimmers breaking 10 school records in 20 possible events and recording close to 70 all-time school marks the 2002 POSC Coach of the Year has left a legacy that few coaches in Pepperdine’s history can hold a torch to.
As a seasoned coach with a wealth of knowledge and youthful enthusiasm for the sport he loves Rodionoff shared his thoughts on what brought him to this stage in his life as well as what he expects from his team and himself moving forward this season.
What made you decide to continue your swimming and diving career after you graduated from Occidental College in 1957?
Primarily because there’s a lifetime involvement in the sport. If you swim your entire life you’ll stay healthy. There might be a few injuries here and there but it’s a real good lifetime sport. It’s a good healthy thing to do as a young adult. And unless you over train you won’t get hurt.
When did you know you wanted to commit to coaching?
Right after I got out of college. I started coaching a little team called the “Puddle Jumpers” because we really didn’t have a pool to train in; so we jumped from one pool to the other. We ended up training at the Beverly Hilton Hotel and we were kind of a little show for them. So they let us use the pool.
There were about a dozen kids all between the ages of 6 to 12 and we traveled all over the area. And out of that group we had an Olympic gold medal winner two national champions two junior national champions and about 32 national record holders all in that one small group of kids.
What drives you to continue coaching?
To see continual improvement. It really keeps you interested. As long as we keep getting better than it’s really fun. If you’re not getting better it’s awful it’s boring. What we’re dealing with a lot of times here are kids who have been doing the sport for 10 or 12 years and are bored with it. So we have to keep coming up with new ways of doing things and new concepts to try and make it more fun so they continue to excel. If you’re just going through the motions it can get pretty boring.
So would you say your creativity has been challenged during your coaching career?
Constantly. You can’t do the same thing we did last year. We can’t even do the same thing we did last week. They have a pretty good idea of what we’re going to do. They’re just not sure on how we’re going to do it.
How does your wife Carrie contribute to your success as a coach and this team?
When I first took over as the coach of swimming and diving here I said ‘Hey I can’t do this. I’m going to quit.’ I’m a Neanderthal with computers and you have to spend as much time in the office as you do coaching and I just couldn’t do it.
So she saved me. And so it happened God’s will she had a bad hip and was an aerobics instructor. So she retired which was the same time I was taking over both the men’s and women’s swimming teams at Pepperdine so she was able to step in. I mean it was hours and hours of paper work that I absolutely hated. She allows me to work almost exclusively with the swimmers. Otherwise I wouldn’t be doing it.
What brought you from UCLA to Pepperdine in 1974?
A couple of things. I built a house out here again God’s will. And at that time I had worked with Bob Horn who was the head coach at UCLA and we had a mutual philosophy on how to coach. When he retired the new coach and I weren’t on the same wavelength.
Then Rick Rolland who was the first men’s swim coach at Pepperdine was an old friend of mine. So I talked to him about our coaching philosophies and decided that I should move over here. And that’s how we started the first men’s team here in 1975 and then the women’s shortly after.
How have you felt this year’s team has performed?
We just keep getting better. A lot of that I attribute to the university because its reputation is getting better. We’re getting much better recruits from all over the country. But also we’re one of the few schools with Christian values in the country. There’s just not many of us left. There are people all over the country that will give up scholarships and go clear across the country to come here which has a lot to do with our school’s Christian values. We do reverse recruiting where we don’t go out and find them but rather they come to us. And we tell them what Pepperdine is all about and they want to come. It’s just great. We used to try and sell the school to the kids and that was just a waste of time and didn’t really work out. So now it’s a lot better than it was.
When you first came over from UCLA was it difficult or frustrating to recruit swimmers in a small market like Pepperdine?
It was awful. You have to have eleven swimmers to compete and we had exactly eleven. So I would go out on campus and try and find people who wanted to swim. How do you recruit for such an expensive academic school? But as the university gained reputation we drew more and more quality students who not only excelled in swimming but who we’re also great students and great people.
How long do you envision yourself coaching at Pepperdine?
I heard an interesting quote from Mike Ditka recently [while] watching a football game: ‘Every day is a gift and that’s why they call it the present.’ As long as we’re getting better that’s when it’s really fun. It’s more fun for me then it was before. A lot of kids come from sheltered situations where they never really had to make their own decisions and never had to take responsibility for their actions. Sometimes their first few decisions in college are very bad. So when you have to coach someone like that that’s really frustrating. But here that really hasn’t been a problem.
What do you like to do with your free time when you are away from the pool?
Well I’m a professional photographer. I have a book out also. It started as taking pictures of the divers way back when and it just developed into a hobby.