Brian McLaughlin Publicizes Retirement as Montclair State Head Swimming & Diving Coach

Montclair, NJ – Following 37 seasons because the Head Coach of the Montclair State University Swimming & Diving groups, Brian McLaughlin has introduced his retirement.

“To say that this has been an amazing ride would be an understatement,” McLaughlin stated. “I have the deepest appreciation for the friends I have made on campus and throughout the sport of swimming. I want to thank Greg Lockard, Holly Gera and Rob Chesney for being fantastic Athletic Directors, mentors and friends over all these years. A special thanks to Coach Dick Purdy of the United States Naval Academy and also to my longest serving assistant coach, Maria Vira.”

The males’s and ladies’s groups have been a mixed 4-17 the 12 months earlier than McLaughlin arrived at Montclair, as he led a fast turnaround that noticed 44 mixed victories over his first 4 seasons on the helm. During that point, 5 swimmers certified for the NCAA Division III Championships with three being named All-Americans. As a consequence, McLaughlin was named the Metropolitan Swimming and Diving Conference Coach of the Year in 1993.

Montclair continued to be a contender in Swimming & Diving because the years progressed, as the ladies’s group gained its first-ever Metropolitan Conference Swimming Championship in 1995, replicating the success the next marketing campaign. In 2014, he guided Montclair to considered one of its finest twin meet seasons, with the boys’s and ladies’s groups combining for 15 wins, punctuated by a fifth place end from the ladies’s group within the Metropolitan Swimming and Diving Championships, rating second amongst Division III groups. 

Most just lately, McLaughlin posted 73 mixed victories over his closing 5 seasons, together with back-to-back 10-win campaigns on the ladies’s facet in 2023 and 2024. It culminated in 2024, when Rourke Peralta certified for the NCAA Division III National Championship meet with a college document and NCAA “B” reduce time within the 100 freestyle.

He additionally succeeded in turning the Women’s Tennis program right into a aggressive group within the east area. Inheriting an 0-8 group that had not had a profitable season in a decade, McLaughlin posted 106 victories and earned a number of NJAC Coach of the Year honors. He additionally guided Montclair to its solely NJAC title, a co-championship in 1996.

McLaughlin was named the NJAC Men’s Swimming & Diving Coach of the Year in 2011, capturing the identical mark on the ladies’s facet in back-to-back years in 2014 and 2015. He is considered one of 5 coaches in Montclair historical past to compile 300 or extra victories, ending his profession with a mixed document of 398-367-2. His profession win whole ranks third in division historical past.