NCAA D3 Faculty Catholic University Fires Headvert Swim Coach After 1 Season and a Conference Title

Catholic University, an NCAA Division III University, has fired head coach Chris Paynter after he lead his crew to the Landmark Conference Title, a number of sources have instructed SwimSwam.

The faculty’s athletics administrators emailed the crew saying that the choice was made after an inside issues evaluation, and a crew assembly was known as for Tuesday night, however no different details about the choice has been made out there.

SwimSwam has reached out to Paynter for remark.

Paynter was with the program for only one season, the place the boys’s crew gained its tenth straight Landmark Conference Championship. The girls’s crew, in the meantime, repeated because the convention runners-up.

Paynter beforehand served at one other Landmark Conference establishment, spending three seasons main the crew at Wilkes University. In 2025, he led the Wilkes males’s program to its finest twin meet file in program historical past, ending at 8–2. The males’s crew positioned sixth on the 2024 Landmark Conference Championships. The Wilkes girls’s program completed the 2024–25 season with a 3–6–1 file and positioned ninth out of 10 groups on the Landmark Conference Championships.

Paynter swam collegiately at Division I Villanova University in Pennsylvania. He is a two-time Big East Champion and a six-time All-Big East performer as a member of varied relay groups. He helped lead the Wildcats to Big East titles in each 2017 and 2018 as a member of the 200 freestyle relays. Paynter contributed to these efforts by incomes medals within the 200 medley and 400 freestyle relays. As a person competitor, he was a six-time medalist—incomes two medals every within the 50 freestyle, 100 freestyle, and 100 butterfly.

Paynter succeeded John Bodden, who served as Catholic’s head swimming coach and aquatics director. Bodden spent three years as head coach of Catholic University after one season as their graduate assistant. A local of George Town within the Cayman Islands, Bodden represented his house nation on the 2019 Pan American Games. He returned to the Cayman Islands to function the head coach of the Stingray Swim Club.