(Tempe, AZ) In the middle of June, every Sun Devil head coach casts their vote for the Sun Devil Coach of the Year in honor of Frank Kush.
The award – presented around the anniversary of Coach Kush’s passing (June 22, 2017) – is one way for each coach to recognize a peer that impressed them the most. There are no true guidelines for this honor; coaches can nominate someone who earned any honors, a coach who made an impression in their first year, or simply the nicest coach in the building. Once the nominations are in, one Sun Devil coach earns what one can consider the ultimate show of respect: an award from their peers in the 26-sport department.
This year’s winner is a head coach of a sport that led his men’s team to the program’s first Pac-12 Championship and a second-place finish at the NCAA Swimming and Dive Championships in Minneapolis.
Swim head coach Bob Bowman will enter his eighth season with Arizona State in 2023-24 as the Frank Kush award winner. In addition to guiding the men’s team to their finishes in the postseason, the Sun Devil men earned the No. 1 ranking in the nation by the CSCAA for the first time in program history back in mid-December. The Sun Devil women were terrific down the stretch to close out the ’22-23 regular season as they won three of their final four dual meets and placed fifth at the Pac-12 Championships.
From earning the highest finish ever at men’s NCAA Championships to crushing a number of school records, here are some of Sun Devil Swim’s top achievements from the 2022-23 season.
3: This is the number of NCAA Championships sophomore Léon Marchand won this past season (200 IM, 200 breast, 400 IM) and he broke NCAA records in each of these events. After NCAAs, Marchand became the winningest individual in Sun Devil men’s history.
3: In a two-week span, the men’s team took down three ranked programs (No. 12 Stanford, No. 2 Cal and No. 19 Arizona).
4: Lindsay Looney became the fourth women’s swimmer of the Bob Bowman era to win an individual Pac-12 Championship, winning both the 200 fly and 500 free, marking the third Sun Devil in the last four years to win the latter event.
6: Charli Brown, Lindsay Looney and Ieva Maluka combined for six of the 14 event wins the Sun Devil women picked up in a 200-56 win over Washington State on January 14.
6: Six Sun Devils earned CSC Academic Honors in the 2022-23 season: Charli Brown (CSC Academic All-District), Alex Colson (CSC Second-Team Academic All-American), Emma Gehlert (CSC Academic All-District), Andrew Gray (CSC Academic All-District), Lindsay Looney (CSC Academic All-District) and Léon Marchand (CSC Second-Team Academic All-American).
9: The Sun Devil men won nine events en route to the program’s first-ever Pac-12 Championship. They broke eight school records and never once let go of their clutch on first place.
9: There were nine swimmers who were crowned 2023 Pac-12 champions. In addition to Looney’s two titles, Léon Marchand, Grant House, Jack Dolan and Max McCusker were the other Sun Devils to win multiple event titles at the Pac-12 Championships. Rounding out the titles for the Sun Devils at Pac-12s were Zalan Sarkany, Julian Hill, Jonny Kulow and Patrick Sammon.
18: The number of Sun Devils who qualified for the NCAA Championships between both men’s and women’s teams. Lindsay Looney had a career-best fourth-place finish in the 200 fly in addition to a 13th-place effort in the 500 free.
81: At NCAA Championships, freshmen Owen McDonald, Zalan Sarkany, Hubert Kos and Jonny Kulow scored 81 points to be the highest-scoring freshman class. Kulow was also named Pac-12 Freshman of the Year and is the fourth recipient of freshman of the year in the Bowman era.
123: In the regular season finale, the Sun Devil women picked up a 123-point victory over in-state rival Arizona which is the largest over the Wildcats since at least 1998. The men had a 165-point victory as the Sun Devils won every event in the sweep.
236: The amount of points scored at the 2022-23 NCAA Championships for the Sun Devil men after competition at just 10 events.
FRANK KUSH AWARD WINNERS
2022-23: Bob Bowman, swim and dive
2021-22: Matt Thurmond, men’s golf
2020-21: Todd Clapper, water polo
2018-19: Greg Powers, hockey
2017-18: Trisha Ford, softball
Press Release courtesy of Sun Devil Athletics – Olivia Dowell
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