Brett Hawke Podcast: Ray Looze Explains How Third Place at Trials Motivated Him to Be Great Coach

Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick

Brett Hawke Podcast: Ray Looze Explains How Third Place at Trials Motivated Him to Be Great Coach

Indiana head coach Ray Looze caught up with Brett Hawke on his podcast about his current training group of college kids and professionals at Indiana where he coaches names like Lilly King, Cody Miller, Blake Pieroni and Zach Apple, as well as undergrads Michael Brinegar and Emily Weiss. In the episode that will be available on Thursday morning at 10, he opened up about how he manages so many athletes and coaches on deck and doesn’t get caught up in the managerial side of swimming.

Looze talked about how smart his pro swimmers are and how they took ownership of their own careers to make themselves great athletes. Looze finished third at the Olympic Trials (14:00) in the 400 IM in 1992 behind Eric Namesnik and David Wharton and explained how that made him hungry in his coaching moving forward, achieving Olympic status in 2016 as an assistant coach. He talked about his mindset leading into the 1992 Trials and the mistakes he believes he made, and how he compared that to Pieroni in 2016 in the 200 free when he didn’t make the final at Trials and ended up making the team in the 100.

Ray Looze explained how he is preparing his athletes for the Olympic Trials this summer and how he preaches to them not to treat it like a huge meet and add any unnecessary pressure that is already there. He talked about coaching Lilly King at the Olympics (23:00) and the rivalry between her and Yulia Efimova that was sparked during the Games, as well as what was said when Efimova was let back into the Games at the last minute. He talked about the tense 100 breast final between the two and the pressure surrounding that race that they initially wanted to avoid (26:00).

Looze talked about his goals he hasn’t yet achieved in his coaching career (30:00) in how he wants to achieve an NCAA team title at Indiana, and what it might take to get there. He previewed the NCAA meet a little bit that is four weeks from now in Greensboro and whether he thinks an Olympics will happen.

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