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New Penn State head swimming & diving coach Hollie Bonewit-Cron has announced the hiring of Nicole McConnell as an assistant coach, completing their new-look staff for the 2024-2025 season.
McConnell comes to the program from Texas A&M, where she spent two years as a volunteer assistant before being promoted to assistant coach for the 2023-2024 season. Texas A&M also brought in a new head coach this season, Blaire Anderson, who brought her own staff in.
Penn State chose to “not renew the contract” of former head coach Tim Murphy, who was put on an “unspecified leave of absence” from his position during the season.
McConnell was a member of the women’s team staff at A&M, which finished 14th at last year’s NCAA Championships.
Prior to joining the Aggies in a paid role, she worked for two years with the Longview Swim Club in East Texas, for two seasons as a graduate assistant at the University of Evansville (including serving as interim head coach for two stints), and as a coach with the Aggie Swim Club while volunteering with the varsity program.
The Nittany Lion men placed 7th out of eight teams at the Big Ten Championships in February while the women placed 9th out of 12 teams. Penn State didn’t send any women’s swimmers to the NCAA Championships, but three men — Cooper Morley (50 free and 100 back), Victor Baganha (100 fly), and Mariano Lazzerini (100 breast and 200 breast) qualified to represent the Nittany Lions next week at IUPUI along with three relays. A few days before the meet, Baganha scratched out of NCAAs with an undisclosed health issue.
The men’s team wound up scoring 8 points to finish 34th at the NCAA Championships. They scored 2 points via a 16th-place finish in the 400 medley relay, while Cooper Morley and Mariano Lazzerini each scored 3 points individually via 14th place finishes in the 100 back and 100 breast, respectively.
Lazzerini was the Big Ten Champion in the 100 breast. That was Penn State’s 15th Big Ten event champion in men’s swimming & diving all-time and first since 2021.
The Penn State women finished 9th out of 12 teams at last year’s Big Ten Championships and qualified one athlete, a diver, for NCAAs.
After Bonewit-Cron was announced as the Nittany Lions’ new leader in late May following 13 years at Miami University in Ohio, she brought her first few assistants on relatively-quickly. By mid-June, Sean Schimmel was on board as associate head coach and and Ethan Curl was hired as assistant coach.
In late July, Ryan Sullivan was added to the staff as an assistant, and now McConnell is the last swim coach hire, while Loren Smith has been named head diving coach and Bill Williams assistant diving coach within the last week.