Ip sees life lessons aplenty as swimming program begins wind-down

As Clemson’s swimming teams and head coach Chris Ip embark on the first phase of the two-year wind-down that will lead to the program’s dissolution, the emotional atmosphere is understandably mixed.

“It’s interesting because we’re going through a true-life situation and we’re learning life-lessons every day,” said Ip, who last season learned that Clemson’s athletic administration had decided to discontinue the swimming program rather than invest in an ACC-caliber, Olympic-sized pool. “We have our ups and downs. There are days where there’s some anger, and there are other days where they’re hopeful. We’re trying to get them in the best position possible, where they can transfer. But we still have very strong goals to be successful here.”

As he enters his eighth and penultimate season at Clemson, Ip still finds himself contending with a variant of the skewed recruiting cycles he inherited that rarely saw an upswing on the men’s side coincide with one on the women’s, and vice-versa. And while progress had been made on finally synchronizing the program’s two sides, losses on one of them have restored the imbalance.

“My goal is for both teams to do as best they can with what we have,” said Ip. “The toughest thing about coaching both the men’s and women’s teams is that you try to bring them up both together. In this situation, one team came back almost fully intact. On the men’s side, nobody transferred, and it’s going to be solid and it’s going to be strong.

“On the other side we lost six women, from our Olympic trialist to our best recruit. Compound that with the six seniors that we lost, and we lost 12 student-athletes. When we compete with 24 for a dual-meet, you’re talking about half your team gone. So we have to really adjust, and it’s going to be very tough once we get into the season, to sit down and have different goals for each team and let them focus-in on that.”

Hence, the reasonable assumption that success for the women will be measured on a more patient and eventual scale.

“It’s so easy for the women to look on the other side, and say, ‘wow, look at the guys…they may be moving forward a little faster than we are,’” said Ip. “On the women’s side they’re not going to move forward as fast, so we’re really going to have to dial-in and just worry about how well we can do in the ACC. We can’t use our dual-meets as a barometer as we usually do. It’s going to be put the blinders on and stay to task, and move towards what we want to do at the end.”

As to why the program’s drawdown created more fall-out on the women’s side, Ip points to a general but observable difference in gender psychology.

“On the guy’s side it’s the band of brothers, always give it a last chance - last-one, fast-one,” he explained. “On the women’s side, they wanted stability. Once they heard this was happening, some of them were looking for an opportunity for a more stable situation. So that’s what happened.

“Even when we’re recruiting, there are two recruiting periods. Ninety-five percent of our early signings will be women. Ninety-five percent of the late ones will be men, because they’re always saying, ‘I can do a little bit better, or I can show people more.’ On the other side, the women are more likely to say, ‘I want to know NOW!’ So that’s sort of what happened, and that’s nature.”

Ip is encouraged by the fact that adversity has drawn his teams more tightly together, and he’s determined to make sure that every student-athlete in his charge will succeed both athletically and academically. Then, he reasons, they can enjoy a full range of options should they elect to transfer, though, significantly, he also allows for the other possibility.

“A lot of the student-athletes just love Clemson,” he said. “I think when the program’s done, they’re done. They don’t want to transfer because they enjoy the school. There was a reason why they chose Clemson in the first place, and so even though one portion of that reason is gone, they still have a passion and they still want to be a Clemson Tiger.”