After almost ten years at the University and 34 years coaching at the collegiate level—with 29 of them spent coaching for NESCAC programs—Coach Peter Solomon will retire from his position as Head Swimming & Diving Coach/Aquatics Director at the end of the 2022–23 academic year. In his time at the University, he has amassed an impressive amount of accolades as well as the respect and appreciation of the swimmers he coaches. The Argus sat down with him to hear about his history with the swimming and diving program, what he’s looking forward to following his retirement, and what his favorite find has been in his 50 years of being an active bird watcher.

The Argus: What made you decide to start coaching in the first place?

Coach Peter Solomon: Swimming was a passion I didn’t want to give up after college. And who thought you could make a living out of pursuing your passion? I’m one of the few swimmers they actually had to kick out of the sport. Back in the day, there wasn’t the professional swimming series that there is now. After college, you pretty much have to hang up your towel. I did my best to keep it going. I was a swimmer at N[orth] C[arolina] State [University], and it’s not uncommon for Division I athletes to take five years to graduate just so you can take less credits so you can devote it to your swimming.

And so a lot of us took five years, and that coincided with the 1984 Olympic Trials, and I had made the 1980 Olympic Trials. I was going for ’84 as well. After my fourth year, I took a year off to completely devote myself to training for ’84. [I] just missed the Olympic Trial cut. I gave that year my best efforts and then I had to go back and graduate in ’85. That brought me into my early twenties. And that’s pretty old back in the day for a swimmer to keep going. I prolonged it as long as I could and eventually ran out of options.

A: And then you ended up coaching as a result.

PS: I actually got my degree. And then at that point, I’m thinking, “Hmm, what’s this coaching thing about?” So I actually became a graduate assistant at NC State, where I went to school. When I went back [for] my fifth year to finish up my degree, I was also able to start coaching on deck with my NC State coach at the time, Don Easterling. And so that led into grad school and I ended up coaching club [swimming] down in North Carolina.

As a young 23-year-old, I took over this pretty established, prominent program down in Raleigh at probably 300 swimmers. In hindsight, that was probably biting off more than I could chew, just getting into the coaching world. I had immediate success with the athletic part of it, but was challenged with the administrative side of coaching a team that size.

So I decided to come back home to New England. I grew up in Rhode Island, so I started as an assistant coach at Providence College with a dear friend of mine. In fact, he was the gentleman who coached me during the push for the 1984 Olympic Trials. I thought I wanted to continue coaching, but I didn’t want to do an age group with the parent groups and all that. So I thought, ‘What could I do to continue coaching but not necessarily deal with as many parents?’ 

College coaching seemed to be a nice fit. So I started working as an assistant coach there. That led to my assistant position at the University of Connecticut, where I got my master’s degree and where I was a graduate assistant. That led right into my first head coaching job, which was at Amherst College.

A: I’m curious to hear how you would describe your own coaching style.

PS: I have this theory that we parent very much like how our parents parented us. I think we take a lot of tips and role modeling from our parents. And then we also coach the way that we got coached in terms of the things that we liked, and we try and add that to our repertoire. But we’re constantly evolving. We’re picking up bits and pieces of other coaches and things we learn professionally. 

Anyways, I would say my style reflects my personality. I’m a pretty laid-back person and I think my coaching style is also pretty laid-back. I like to think that I write challenging workouts but try and keep a positive atmosphere. In other words, I don’t try to create both intense workouts and intense environments. 

A: That personal approach seems to be the most effective.

PS: Yeah, especially in recent years. Maybe in the old days, probably when I was growing up, it was more of a football coaching mentality. Not that all football coaches are alike, but if you had to generalize, I would say there was a lot of screaming and whatnot in terms of coaches and how they communicated with their athletes. But yeah, I’m not sure the old school [way] works anymore, even in football. In swimming, in particular, we attract very cerebral athletes, and we have to try and connect. 

A: I can imagine that also works better because swimming is a more individual sport, as you’re competing within your own event and to the overall team. Do you ever find it challenging to go between different events? 

PS: The athlete [to] coach ratio has always been a challenge for coaches. We don’t have the resources of some sports. We have to make do with what we have. Wesleyan is very supportive in terms of part-time coaches and the resources they’ve given us. I couldn’t ask for a better facility. But the reality of it is that we have almost 80 athletes on the team. So it necessitates for me to get help just so athletes can have the attention they deserve. 

With Division III swimming, it’s one-stop shopping. We do everything. We do the ordering of the food, we do the fundraising, we do the recruiting, we do everything from A to Z. Pretty much all of it lands on the head coach’s desk. That’s the challenge there in terms of logistics.

[Another challenge] of coaching an individual sport in a team concept is the reality that without the team, the individual wouldn’t happen. It’s such a grueling sport to swim on your own, you know? It wouldn’t interest anybody. So that’s where the team concept comes in. Just doing it with your friends, your teammates, and sharing their victories and helping them out in their challenging moments. I mean, that’s the stuff that is the glue that puts it all together in relationships. 

A: What do you think about coaching Wesleyan’s program compared to Amherst or other NESCAC programs you’ve coached?

PS: It’s true that each NESCAC school has its own unique student body. When I came to Wesleyan, it had a certain reputation. When I got here, I would say that for most parts, the reputation [was] upheld. The Wesleyan student [body] is much more diverse than the Amherst and Middlebury student bodies…. I think we lead the conference in terms of that diversity and the team reflects that [diversity]. So when talking to recruits, I say it is an eclectic group of student-athletes who are passionate about swimming but even more passionate about their studies. 

A: What do you feel your main focus has been during your time at Wesleyan? 

PS: To create a team culture that was one of support and of competition. It’s always been a close-knit team, but we’re trying to raise the bar in terms of the program’s competitiveness, not only in the conference but also in the country. Unfortunately, we’ve picked the deepest, most talented conference in the country to do that in. So even in our best years, when we’re scoring 17th at the NCAAs in 2018, you know we find ourselves as the sixth NESCAC team, with five other conference teams in front of us in the top 15. It shows you how competitive things are here. So I often have reminded our team, in just about any other conference, you would be conference champions. So don’t let your successes get lost in all the amazing things that are happening here in the NESCAC.

A: What have been some of your biggest highlights from the past ten years? 

PS: Here at Wesleyan, I take a lot of pride in growing the program. Our numbers have almost doubled. [We’ve had] renovations of the facility. I would say we’ve put a lot of pride in creating this amazing competitive atmosphere. And again, we couldn’t have done that without the support of the school and the department.

In terms of accomplishments in the pool, we’ve gone as high as sixth place in women’s in 2018 in the conference, and that was a major accomplishment for us, [as well as placing] in the top 17th in the NCAA Championships in 2019. We had a swimmer, Cameron Murphy ’20, win the NESCAC Championships a total of six times in her career. In 2019, she set the conference record and conference championship meet record in the 50-yard backstroke and the 100-yard backstroke respectively. That was an amazing meet for us and Wesleyan hosted the championships that year.

I’ve been coaching in the NESCAC for 29 years now. I have to say that meet stood out as one of the most remarkable weekends in my coaching career just because every time somebody got up on the block, they did something phenomenal. When all was said and done, we had nine varsity records established, but more importantly, best times all around.

Both [2018 and 2019] were amazing years for our women’s program. On our men’s side, I’d say 2018 was a special year for our men. We moved up to seventh place in the conference. We’ve been in the lower tier of the NESCAC with our men, so to bump up into seventh was a huge success for us. We graduated quite a huge class that year, so we’ve been rebuilding ever since. It felt like last year was going to be our year to make a resurgence with the men, and then COVID hit us three days before the championships. It took a little bit of the wind out of our sail going into championships. But even though we finished last year with our men at championships, you [would have] thought we were winning the meet just because of how well people were swimming and the attitude on the deck. 

Again, everything is relative, but I would say last year’s men’s NESCAC Championships couldn’t have been any better. I won’t bore you with the details, but just to see some of the time drops that our swimmers were accomplishing was truly impressive.

A: What do you hope your legacy is as a coach?

PS: I would have liked it to say conference or national champions, but that didn’t play out. I’m competitive. I would say that has always been the goal—to be a top-tier NESCAC team—but it didn’t come together the way I had hoped.

But on the other hand, if when I leave my program and someone says after the fact…. “Well, I don’t want to sound simple, but that he was a good guy and I really liked swimming for him.” If they learned life lessons through our program and through the sport of swimming that they’ll carry on beyond their four years of college, then I think I’ve done my job. It’s not necessarily going to be about the points and the placements ten years down the road. The experience on the team and their relationship with their fellow teammates and their coaches, if they can look back on that and say it added to their college life, I think that’s, to me, the ultimate compliment. 

A: What do you plan to do once you’re done as a coach at Wesleyan?

PS: I have a lot of interests and hobbies. My children being my biggest interest. They’re spread out over the country; I have a 26-year-old daughter in LA, I have a 20-year-old senior at Montana State University, and I have an 18-year-old son at Christopher Newport University, who happens to play lacrosse. Having a bit more relaxed schedule, I hope to be at a lot of those lacrosse games. 

I would say spending time with my family is always a priority but I also have a lot of hobbies, and one of them is hiking. I’ve hiked the Appalachian Trail, and I love long-distance hiking. I’ve ridden my bike across the country. I have all these bucket list things that I like to challenge myself with.

On top of that, I’m a pretty active birder, so I’ve been keeping a life bird list since I was seven years old. It’s getting close to 500. That’ll be the next goal is to try to get that 500th species in the United States.

A: Wow. What’s your favorite bird that you’ve come across so far in your almost 500-long list?

PS: That’s a tough question. Gosh, I’m trying to think. The one that I got the most excited about, it was a red-faced warbler. So I went to Southeast Arizona with my best friend from childhood. He and I started birding together. So here we are 50 years later, and we’re still birding together. So we climbed up this mountain to see an owl, which we ended up seeing, a spotted owl. But then another birder came through and said, “Hey, there’s a red-faced warbler at the top of the mountain.” Off we went. And so we looked and we looked and we gave up after an hour and started walking back down the mountain.

Sure enough, that darn thing, not only one, but two of them flew into the tree right next to us. It’s kind of the holy grail for me of warblers. I’ve seen pictures of it growing up. I’ve flipped through books and said that would be cool to see someday. And three years ago we had the chance to add that to our life list.

A: That’s so cool.

PS: My favorite bird, though, has to be the common loon. Just because it’s representative of northern wilderness. I would say anytime I’m in their environment, the loon, their call, their rituals are pretty fascinating. When you watch a big screen movie that takes place down south and the soundtrack plays a loon call…it just ruins a movie for me. They’ll do the same thing with eagles. They’ll show an eagle in a movie but give it a red-tailed hawk call. It’s like, what? So it can be a blessing and a curse being a bird watcher.

A: Is there anything else you want to add before I wrap up the interview? 

PS: What I’ll miss most are my daily interactions with the athletes, but it’s been a really amazing journey. I continue to marvel at the opportunities and the people that this job has exposed me to. While I enjoy my hobbies and look forward to spending time with family, that’ll be the part of the job that I’ll miss the most. But I’m not going anywhere. I’ll continue to not only come and cheer on the athletes, but they’ll probably see me at the pool trying to get back in shape.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Cameron Bonnevie can be reached at cbonnevie@wesleyan.edu.