Swimming & Diving
- Title:
- Head Swimming Coach
Veteran Head Coach Frank Comfort To Close Out Tar Heel Tenure
On June 30, 2007, the career of one of the most respected college swimming coaches in history will come to a close. His 565 total dual-meet victories heading into his last season place University of North Carolina Head Coach Frank Comfort atop a very distinguished list as the winningest college dual-meet coach in collegiate swimming history, a status he achieved after surpassing Bob Kipputh of Yale during the 2004-05 season. Add to that 25 Atlantic Coast Conference championships, 10 with the men's teams and 15 with the women's - the most in conference history by a single coach - and it is easy to see the caliber of success Comfort has achieved.
In April 2006, Comfort announced his retirement from coaching, effective at the close of the 2006-07 school year. Rich DeSelm, a former long-time assistant to Comfort at UNC, is already in place on this year's staff as the Tar Heels' designated head coach, effective July 1, 2007.
Comfort's swimmers and divers have won, won often, and won big -- both at the University of North Carolina for the past 29 years and previous to that when he coached at Johns Hopkins University for nine years. Of his 565 career dual meet wins, 303 have come while coaching men's teams and 262 while coaching women's teams. Away from the pool, Comfort has also been dedicated to his swimmers' success in the classroom and has trained his swimmers to be active and successful members of the college communities where they attend school.
The 30th Year at North Carolina
But success is not as simple as the shifting of hands around a clock, the measure used in computing winning or losing in the swimming world. A collegiate program's merit is more complex. The merit is found in whether its team members are truly student-athletes and whether they develop as individuals in all facets of collegiate life during their tenure with the program.
And in these ways, Comfort, who closes out 30 years of coaching at North Carolina in 2006-07, has excelled beyond any reasonable standard. In fact, the way his student-athletes combine success in the pool with success in the classroom could easily be cited as a model for all to follow.
Just over a decade ago, in 1995, Comfort became the winningest swimming coach in the history of the Atlantic Coast Conference, in terms of league championships won, marking success in a conference that dates back to 1953. That season, Comfort won his 17th and 18th conference titles, surpassing the 17 league crowns former North Carolina State University coach Don Easterling won from 1970-94.
Comfort has continued to add to his impressive resume. Heading into the 2006-07 campaign, he has led Tar Heel teams to 25 ACC championships during his tenure. That figure includes 10 men's championships and 15 women's titles. In his 29 years as the Tar Heels' head coach, Comfort has led his teams into battle in ACC championship meets 57 times. Twenty-five times (43.9 percent of the time), UNC has won the title.
500th Win Comes in 2002
Comfort passed the 500 victory mark in dual meet wins in his career in the fall of 2002. Going into the 2006-07 season, Comfort has led UNC men's teams to 221 dual meet wins, the most in league history, just in front of Easterling's total of 217. Comfort's 10 men's ACC championship equal the second most won by a head coach in league history.
Since the ACC recognized women's swimming and diving as a championship sport in 1978-79, Comfort has led the Tar Heels to 245 dual meet wins, the most in league history. Comfort's winning percentage of .836 in that time period is also No. 1 in the annals of ACC swimming lore. Comfort has led his women's teams to 15 ACC titles, 10 more than any other coach in ACC history.
In recent years, Comfort has led the Tar Heel swimming and diving program to some of its most distinguished moments in the pool. The Carolina women won six successive conference championships from 1991-96 and despite not winning the league crown from 1997-99, the women went on to finish 16th, 12th and 20th, respectively, in the NCAA Championships those years. The 1999-2000 team returned to the victory stand at the ACC Championships and repeated the feat in 2000-01 and 2001-02.
UNC's women have twice won six ACC championships in a row, doing so in 1981-86 and again in 1991-96. In the 28 ACC championship appearances under Comfort's tutelage, UNC has 15 titles, 11 second-place finishes and two third-place standings.
The men won six successive ACC titles from 1993-98, the third-longest streak in ACC men's swimming and diving history and the longest string of ACC men's swimming titles in school history. UNC also won a total of nine ACC championships in men's swimming in the 11-year period from 1988-98. The only years the Tar Heels did not win in that time span were 1990 when they finished second by only three points and 1992 when they finished third. In fact, the Tar Heels have never finished lower than fourth in the ACC Championships. In Comfort's 29 years as head coach the men have finished first or second in the ACC meet 20 times.
Neither the women nor the men have ever finished out of the upper division of the ACC in Comfort's 29 years at Carolina. No other school can make that claim.
Consistency Nearly Three Decades Long
In his 29 years at Carolina, Comfort's women's teams have been consistent national powers, finishing in the national Top 25 in 25 of those 29 years, including nine seasons in the Top 10. Only once in the 29 seasons have the Tar Heels failed to score at the AIAW or NCAA national championships. Carolina has won 15 women's ACC championships during his tenure and has never finished lower than third in the league. UNC's ACC championship seasons have been 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001 and 2002.
The overall dual-meet record for the Carolina women under his tutelage is 250-51-1, a winning percentage of .829, and 126-19 in Atlantic Coast Conference dual meets, a winning percentage of .869. Four of his teams have gone through seasons unbeaten in dual-meet competition and 13 have posted perfect records in ACC dual-meet action.
Overall, Comfort's men's teams at UNC are 221-87-1 in dual meets, a winning percentage of .717, and they are an even more impressive 125-31-1 in ACC dual meets, a winning percentage of .799. When Comfort arrived at UNC in 1977, the Tar Heels had not won an ACC championship since 1964. Carolina claimed its first ACC crown under Comfort in 1983 and it has gone on to win nine more conference titles in 1988, 1989, 1991, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998.
It All Started at Johns Hopkins
Prior to coaching at Carolina, Comfort was the head men's swimming and diving coach at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., an NCAA Division III swimming power. In nine seasons there, the Blue Jays went 82-26 in dual meet competition, a winning percentage of .759. Comfort also coached the Johns Hopkins women for two seasons with the Blue Jays going 12-5.
At Johns Hopkins, Comfort's men's teams won four Mason-Dixon Conference titles and eight Middle Atlantic Conference championships. The women won two MAC crowns.
The Blue Jays' men's teams had seven Top 10 finishes at the NCAA Division III championships, winning the title in 1977 and finishing second in 1975 and 1976.
Comfort's overall coaching record, including his tenure at Hopkins and with both the Carolina men and Carolina women is 565-169-2, a winning percentage of .769. Comfort has been a part of teams which have won 39 conference championships in the ACC, the Middle Atlantic, and the Mason-Dixon leagues. He has coached teams which have combined to total 46 national Top 25 finishes.
Comfort was selected as the ACC Women's Swimming Coach-of-the-Year in 1982, 1984, 1985, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001 and 2002 and as the ACC Men's Swimming Coach-of-the-Year in 1991, 1993, 1996 and 1997.
Comfort's swimmers also do extremely well in the classroom. The squads have won numerous academic accolades through the years from the College Swimming Coaches Association of America. Each semester finds many members of the two teams recognized on the University's Dean List.
As another brief example of what is the norm in the program, the Carolina men's and women's swimming and diving teams did a stellar job in the classroom during the 2005-06 school year as recognized by the Atlantic Coast Conference. Thirty-three Tar Heels earned membership on the league's ACC Academic Honor Roll last school year. Those kinds of numbers are the norm for UNC year-in and year-out.
A Plethora of Distinguished Swimmers
During his long tenure at the University of North Carolina, Comfort has tutored NCAA, AIAW, and U.S. Swimming national champion swimmers like Jessi Perruquet, Sue Walsh, Barb Harris, Cami Berizzi, Amy Pless, Bonny Brown, Ann Marshall, Sarah Perroni, Susan O'Brien, Kari Haag, Richelle Fox, Bryan Stuck, Trevor Runberg and Molly Freedman. Swimmers he has coached who have been chosen for Olympic Teams include Sue Walsh, Ann Marshall, Wendy Weinberg, Janis Hape, Chris Stevenson, David Monasterio, Yann deFabrique and Yi-Khy Saw.
His top men's swimmers have included All-America backstroker Kenny Ireland; four-time first-team All-America backstroker Eric Ericson; Olympians Chris Stevenson, David Monasterio and Yann deFabrique; John Davis, who won more individual men's ACC championships than any other swimmer in conference history; All-America freestyler James Hamrick; Trevor Runberg, a member of the U.S. National Team at the 1998 World Swimming Championships in Perth, Australia; and, in the past decade, All-Americas and ACC champions Jeff Weiss, Eric Fehr, Scott Troy, Tucker Shade, Ted Brisson, Sean Quinn, Yuri Suguiyama and Hank Browning.
Amongst the top performers on the women's side have been a corps of national collegiate champions -- Sue Walsh, the winner of 11 titles on her own, as well as Amy Pless, Cami Berizzi, Barb Harris and Jessi Perruquet; another group which includes ACC Swimmers of the Year or conference meet Most Valuable Performers such as Melissa Douse, Leslie Ramsey, Kari Haag, Richelle Fox, Cindy Shirey, Gayle Hegel, Susan O'Brien, Chrissy Miller; and All-Americas and ACC champions like Polly Winde, Melanie Buddemeyer, Sarah Perroni, Erika Acuff, Christy Watkins and Katie Hathaway.
Three of Comfort's swimmers have won the Patterson Medal as the top senior student-athlete at UNC -- Bonny Brown in 1980, Sue Walsh in 1984 and Katie Hathaway in 2002.
In 2002-03, the 50th anniversary year of the ACC, 33 Tar Heel swimmers were amongst the Top 100 swimmers and divers named to the all-time 50th anniversary team, the largest contingent of any conference school. An overwhelming number of those 33 swimmers - 28 - were coached at UNC by Comfort.
Coaching National Teams
Because of these accomplishments, his stature as a coach has solidified in the amateur and international ranks. Comfort served as the head coach for the U.S. team at the 1999 World Junior Championships in Barcelona, Spain. In 1994, he served as the head coach of the United States Women's Team which competed in the Goodwill Games in St. Petersburg, Russia. Comfort was also named by U.S. Swimming as the head coach for the 1997 U.S. Women's Junior National team which competed in the Malmo Grand Prix in Malmo, Sweden.
Additionally, he served on coaching staffs at the U.S. Olympic Festival on six occasions -- as an assistant coach for the South Team at the 1979 Festival in Colorado Springs, Colo., as the South Team's head coach on three occasions -- in 1982 in Indianapolis, Ind., 1985 in Baton Rouge, La. and 1989 in Oklahoma City, Okla. -- and as the North Team's head coach in 1993 at San Antonio, Texas, and the East Team's head coach in 1995 at Denver, Colo. In 1987, he served as the sport commissioner for swimming at U.S. Olympic Festival in Chapel Hill, an appointment from North Carolina Amateur Sports, the local organizing committee for that event.
Comfort has also been head coach for U.S. teams which met the Soviet Union in a dual meet in Knoxville, Tenn. in August 1982 and which participated in the Hapoel Games in Tel Aviv, Israel in May 1983. He was an assistant coach for U.S. teams in the August 1981 World University Games in Bucharest, Romania, for the U.S.-West German dual meet in Gainesville, Fla. in July 1982, and for the August 1990 League of European Nations meet in Rome. His international experience also includes a Czechoslovakian tour in 1976.
Comfort's name has consistently been on the U.S. Swimming International Coaches List, an honor going only to the most elite coaches in the United States. Comfort first appeared on that list in 1976.
The Harrisburg, Pa., native was a charter member of the NCAA Women's Swimming Committee when it was formed in 1981. He served on the committee for five years and then served for an additional year on the combined men's and women's NCAA Swimming Committee in 1986-87.
Personal Information
Born December 20, 1945, Comfort is a 1967 alumnus of Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history and physical education. Comfort was a three-time swimming letterman for the Orangemen. He earned a Master of Arts degree in physical education from the University of North Carolina in 1968, coaching the Tar Heel freshman men's swimming team that year to a 7-0 record.
Prior to returning to Chapel Hill in 1977, Comfort was head men's and women's swimming coach at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Md., for nine years from 1968-77. His 1975 and 1976 teams at Johns Hopkins were NCAA Division III runners-up and the 1977 team won the NCAA Division III championship.
He also coached the highly successful Homewood Aquatic Club in Baltimore, Md. during his Hopkins tenure. One of his best swimmers at Homewood Aquatic Club was Wendy Weinberg, a member of the 1976 U.S. Olympic Team in Montreal, Canada where she won the bronze medal in the 800-meter freestyle.
Comfort's swimmers at Hopkins won 12 NCAA individual titles and one NCAA relay team title. He was inducted into the Johns Hopkins University Athletic Hall of Fame on September 13, 1997.
Carolina's first ever full-time swimming coach when he came to Chapel Hill in 1977, Comfort was named the youngest recipient ever of the Master Coach Award from the College Swimming Coaches Association of America in 1979. He also received a 25-year service award in 1992 from the CSCAA.
The Comfort Family
Comfort is the son of the late Robert Comfort and the late Frances Comfort of Harrisburg, Pa. His father was a professor of business administration at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. His mother was the head librarian at Harrisburg Area Community College. She was also Carolina's No. 1 swimming fan for over two decades. Mrs. Comfort was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Syracuse.
Comfort has two children, a son, Steven, and a daughter Susan, both Carolina graduates. Steven graduated from UNC in 1989 and was a member of Chi Psi fraternity. He works for HI5.com in San Francisco, Calif. He has held management positions at several internet companies over the past 16 years and sold a few of them to Yahoo! And Monster.com. He is an avid winemaker and enjoys making Pinot Noir from neighboring Sonoma County. Steven's wife, Marissa Levinson, was born and raised in Geneva, Switzerland. She is a lawyer who also works for a web company, SixApart.com.
Comfort's daughter, Susan, is a 1993 Phi Beta Kappa UNC alumna. Susan currently resides in Washington D.C. with her partner, Lisa B. Cohen, and their two children. After a decade of environmental and political experience, Susan is currently the Development Director for the Environmental Working Group, a non-profit advocacy organization focusing on toxics and human health. A political consultant and lawyer, Lisa Comfort-Cohen has served as Chief of Staff to U.S. Representative Diana DeGette of Colorado since advising her initial election campaign in 1996. Both Lisa and Susan were named by Campaigns & Elections as "Rising Stars of Politics" in 2000.
Comfort and Cohen have two children together. Louis, who goes by Luke, was born January 4, 2003 and arrived as Coach Comfort's first grandchild. Elizabeth Louise was born April 28, 2005. She goes by Ella. Luke attended his first Carolina basketball game at the tender age of seven weeks.
Comfort's hobbies include playing golf, swimming and running. He also enjoys all college sports and was often seen at Tar Heel field hockey games when his niece, Ali Stewart, played for Coach Karen Shelton's nationally-ranked Carolina squad from 1999-2002. Comfort also loves attending Tar Heel basketball games. He enjoys advancing philanthropic causes in education and has endowed scholarships in the Schools of Education at UNC and Syracuse University.
He has been in a 14-year relationship with his significant other, Emily DeWire of Eagles Mere, Pa. The widowed DeWire is the mother of two daughters. Rachael is a Penn State graduate. She and her husband Mark Trump live in Williamsport, Pa. Korie is an alumna of King's College in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where she studied to be a physician assistant. She was a Dean's List student at King's College. Korie is married to Francis Lambert and lives on the Lambert family farm outside of Dushore, Pa.
