Invasion of Privacy: Geneseo swim and dive head coach Paul Dotterweich
Photo courtesy of geneseoknights.com
SUNY Geneseo’s athletic teams have taken home the State University of New York Athletic Conference’s (SUNYAC) Commissioner’s Cup for seven consecutive years. The honor, which measures the top overall athletic program in the SUNYAC conference, determines the overall winner for each given school year. To continue to have the consistent success Geneseo has, many of the teams on campus have needed to perform well for years on end. This is not any more applicable than with the men’s and women’s swim and dive teams led by head coach Paul Dotterweich.
Coach Dotterweich has led the two squads since the 2000-01 season and has struggled to do anything that isn't winning. Dotterweich has taken home 38 out of 44 possible SUNYAC championships combined between the men’s and women’s teams during his tenure. Both teams have also won the conference title each year since 2013, with the women’s team having won 14 consecutive championships.
Along with the team’s consistent success in the pool, Dotterweich has been awarded SUNYAC Coach of the Year honors 23 times. While sitting down with Coach Dotterweich, he made it abundantly clear that his success can not solely be attributed to himself, as the efforts of the staff around him and athletes on his squads have made his job that much easier.
After starting to swim in seventh grade, Dotterweich began to think of coaching as a possible career choice, thanks to his high school coach’s significant influence. Dotterweich graduated from Buffalo State in 1997 where he attained a degree in secondary education with a focus in biology. After graduation, however, he planned to “teach and coach a little bit,” but was “fortunate enough to flip it around where I coach a lot and turned it into a full-time coaching position.”
Dotterweich first found a coaching position at Buffalo State just months after graduation but quickly found that the team was “reaching a bit of a ceiling” and looked for another opportunity. Geneseo’s existing “tradition of success in swimming and diving and residential campus” led Dotterweich to his current post. By taking it, he was hopeful that he would be better able to create a positive team culture with athletes who lived on campus full-time.
Once he was here, however, it was his fellow athletics department members who helped keep him here and shape the way he coached in Geneseo. Dotterweich pinpointed long-time track and field/cross country head coach Mike Woods and current coaches Dan Moore and Chris Popovici as peers he regularly bounces ideas off of due to their respective sports sharing similar challenges due to their individual nature.
The individual nature is not the only hurdle for Coach Dotterweich, as he explained coaching both men and women “can be challenging at times.” He has attempted to solve any differences by “supporting the women the way they need to be supported, and the men the way they need and giving them opportunities to have their own personalities as a group.” This is done by having combined practices throughout the week before separating the teams on Saturdays, which allows both to be themselves and for bonds to grow.
While discussing this season specifically, Coach Dotterweich was quick to praise the perseverance of the current teams as they were without a home pool until January. The team had to travel to both the Geneseo Central High School along with multiple pools in the Rochester area. The team “never complained at all about the situation… [they] came in, got the job done in stride, and haven’t missed a beat” despite the adversity they faced.
Coach Dotterweich made sure to point out that, “some of our first-years have really impressed and made some great strides,” in their debut season with the Knights. The combination of those young members, along with the older, more seasoned members has led to great successes. When speaking on those older Knights, Dotterweich described them as, “our rocks… you don’t take them for granted but they're always there and you know you can count on them.”
Recent meet wins over Union College and Ithaca College, along with a great showing at the Geneseo Diving Invitational, have the team buzzing as they make their way into the SUNYAC Tournament and beyond. Coach Dotterweich said the goal is “always, as a team, to win a conference championship… while looking to increase [Geneseo’s] presence at the national championships.” When asked about what it will take for this team to reach those goals, Coach Dotterweich stressed that “the mental side at this point is really important— staying confident, believing in yourself, not overthinking things, and just having fun.”
The men’s and women’s swim and dive SUNYAC Tournaments will conclude on Saturday, Feb. 24. From there, the team will have about one month before the NCAA Championships begin in Greensboro, North Carolina.