By David Rieder.
If it seems like Susan Teeter has been coaching at Princeton forever, think about this fact: when most of her current class of freshmen was born, Teeter was already in her 14th season on the job. Her tenure at the school has now stretched to 33 years.
“I took this job at the age of 24, so when I started coaching here, my senior class was only two years younger than me,” she said. “In so many ways, we’ve all grown up together. It’s a place that I chose to stay.”
But in less than two months, that chapter of Teeter’s life will be over. This past fall, she came to the decision that the 2016-17 season would be her last.
“I’ve always promised myself that I’d get out before I needed to,” she said.
“I came into this year having pretty much accomplished most the things career-wise that I wanted to, but I also [wanted to] make sure that my program was set up for success in the future and feel like if I left today, I’ve got everything in a really good place, and I feel good about where anyone who comes after me can go with this.”
So late in the fall, Teeter informed the administration of her decision. But then came the tough part: trying to be stoic while delivering the news to her 33 swimmers.
“When I told the team, it felt like I couldn’t breathe very much,” she recalled. “It took a minute for it to sink in what I’d said. After about two minutes, the tears started across the room. I kept telling myself, ‘Don’t look at anyone. Don’t cry.’ And I was already crying.”
It took a few moments to sink in that the woman they affectionately referred to simply as “Teeter” would no longer be their coach. Junior team captain Maddy Veith vividly remembers that scene.
“It was just absolute shock,” Veith said. “It’s almost unimaginable thinking of Princeton without Teeter. That moment that she told us was just weird. After that, everyone was pretty emotional about it. We are all very attached to her, so we’re pretty upset that she’s going to be leaving.”
That bond comes not from any revolutionary training philosophy but from the lessons Teeter imparts on her athletes outside of the water. Veith explained that Teeter helps the swimmers find solutions to delicate issues and preaches mature, classy behavior. She hopes that they will become better swimmers, but improving as human beings takes a higher priority.
“People think [coaching] is about X’s and O’s, and it is. I love to win, and I love to see kids go fast and achieve their best times,” Teeter said. “But there’s just a lot of things that I love doing that teach them to be better women and better people, and as a result that helps them become better athletes because they can support each other on a higher level.”
Teeter refuses to think of situations as challenging but rather as opportunities for teaching. That’s the approach she took this fall when it was discovered that members of the Princeton men’s team had posted racist and misogynistic content to a team-sponsored email listserv. As punishment, the remainder of the men’s team’s season was cancelled.
In the aftermath, Teeter worked to help the women on her team feel empowered, rather than discouraged.
“Like anything that we face, you look for opportunities to teach in the moment,” she said. “I’m really adamant about trying to help young women get clear in life about what their role is and what they have to offer. Whether anyone agrees with them or not, my main role is to help them get clarity around things and decide who they want to be as women and be able to use their voices in a powerful way, not a negative way.”
Now, after more than three decades of helping women grow up at Princeton, Teeter hopes to share her tools with swim teams around the country—including her team-building activities and women’s leadership strategies.
“I feel like it’s all the things I’m doing with my team right now that don’t involve swimming from one bulkhead to the other wall and teaching other coaches how to use those team-building ideas to bring their kids together at a faster and higher level,” she explained.
Teeter also has one year remaining as President of the College Swim Coaches Association, and she plans to devote considerable energy to convincing athletic directors on the merits of keeping their swim teams or even bringing them back.
But before all of that, Teeter has two more meets as the Tigers’ head coach. First comes this week’s annual tri-meet against traditional Ivy League powers Harvard and Yale—known colloquially as “H-Y-P”—and then the Ivy Championships, which run Feb. 16-18 in Providence, R.I.
She’s tried to avoid thinking about the finality of this season, but lately, it has begun to set in.
“I don’t think it hit me on my last home dual meet until I read in the press release that no meet at Princeton had ever been held in DeNunzio [pool] without me, and I was like ‘Really?’ Not that I don’t know that, but I never thought it that way. I was like, ‘Oh, I guess this is real,’” she said.
But Teeter insists that her swimmers stay focused on the task at hand and not let her retirement be distracting.
“Teeter was very explicit in saying we should get back to business because we have a job to do,” Veith said. “She was like, ‘This is happening.’”
“I don’t want to get emotional to the point where it’s distracting from their ability to do what we’ve trained to do,” Teeter said. “It’s important for me, like any year, to be part of their process and challenge them to be the best team they can be and see how high I can get them to jump to touch the bar.”
Great article Susan — all the best to a great coach!
Bob Goldberg