Matt Donovan
Head Coach
Phone: (917) 789-0657
Email:
matthew.donovan@liu.edu
Matt Donovan was named head coach of the women's swimming team on October 1, 2016.
PRIOR TO LIU
Donovan came to LIU prior to the 2016-17 season after spending two seasons as an assistant on both the men's and women's side at UConn.
In 2014-15, the Huskies' women's team finished second at the American Athletic Conference Championships behind champion SMU. In Donovan's second season at UConn, 19 swimmers and divers were named to the All-Conference team. School records were also set, with five records broken on the men's side and four on the women's side. Chris Girg and Jackie Van Lew were named Swimmers of the Week by
CollegeSwimming.com, while the Huskies won their second-straight Copa Coqui Invitational.
The Huskies also enjoyed a highly successful campaign in Donovan's first season in Storrs, earning 18 All-Conference selections. Two swimmers, Chinyere Pigot ( an Olympian from Suriname) and Jeff Magin, both achieved American Athletic Swimmer of the Week honors during the year. Connecticut hoisted the championship trophy for the first time ever in Puerto Rico by posting the top combined score at the 2015 Copa Coqui Invitational last January.
Donovan, who has extensive coaching experience at both the collegiate and club level, joined the Connecticut swimming and diving program as an assistant coach in the fall of 2014. The former Keene State College swimmer was a two-time captain of the squad, qualified for the conference championship each season, made ECAC's twice and helped break multiple team relay records. He received his bachelor's degree in social sciences from KSC and went on to earn a master's in Education from the University of Phoenix in 2004.
After graduating, Donovan served as an assistant coach of the boys' and girls' swim teams at Farmington High School in Connecticut. He helped lead the school to four Nutmeg Conference team championships from 1998-2000. During his coaching tenure at FHS, seven swimmers earned All-State honors. Additionally, he was the head age group coach at Wheeler YMCA in Plainville, Conn., where he produced several talents, including Madison Kennedy who has represented Team USA consistently since 2009 and won six international medals, one world record and won the NCAA team championship with Cal Berkeley in 2009.
Donovan jumped to the college ranks in 2004 as an assistant coach for Rutgers University, under four-time Big East Coach of the Year Chuck Warner, and again coached Madison Kennedy her freshman year. He took on many roles while with the Scarlet Knights, including supervising team practices, recruiting and running workouts for the RU summer camps.
In May of 2000, Donovan was named the head swim coach of the Somerset Valley YMCA Swim Team. He spent 15 years with the team, overseeing the growth of the program from 46 swimmers to well over 500 participants when he left in August of 2014 to pursue new coaching opportunities. Donovan saw great success while with Somerset Valley, leading the team to the New Jersey State Championship in 2006, and every year from 2010 to 2014. He was tabbed as the New Jersey All-Star team coach in 2003 and 2004.
On the national level, Donovan was awarded the 2013 YMCA National Coach of the Meet honor for the Long Course Championships held in Atlanta, Georgia. He has coached two National Camps (2010, 2011) at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and assisted the USA Zone Select Camp in Baltimore in 2012. His Somerset Valley teams have been honored four times by the USA Club Excellence program bronze (2010) and silver (2012, 2013, 2014). USA Swimming had had him as a guest presenter twice for their webinar series that can be found on
usaswimming.org. He is also a guest author for the United States Masters Swimming on-line magazine.