UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.- Penn State swimming and diving head coach Hollie Bonewit-Cron announces Ryan Sullivan will join her staff as an assistant coach. Sullivan becomes the third member of her staff and second assistant coach. The new Nittany Lion coach brings collegiate experience at the coaching level and from his time as a student-athlete.
“I am very excited to have Ryan on board with our program with his level of enthusiasm and drive,” said Bonewit-Cron. “He will add a great dynamic to our staff and the future of our program both short term and long term.”
Sullivan has spent his collegiate coaching career at the University of Mary Washington, where he started as a volunteer assistant coach in 2020 and was promoted to an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator after his first season. In his current role with the Eagles, he leads practices, creates and manages meet line up sheets and monitors the well-being of student-athletes in and out of the pool. Sullivan is also responsible for Mary Washington’s recruiting coordination. He initiates contact with hundreds of potential student-athletes and organizes recruit visits. He helped the program to three-straight successful incoming classes of 16, 12 and 22 swimmers over the last three years.
He also helped the team to eight program records in three seasons and earned Metropolitan Swimming Conference Women’s Coaching Staff of the Year in 2022 and 2023 after guiding the team to two straight conference championships. Most recently the squad earned the 2024 New Jersey Athletic Conference Championship. Sullivan has helped coach back-to-back top-25 NCAA Championship swimmers, nine all-Americans and five NCAA Championship qualifiers.
The new Nittany Lion assistant coach graduated from Bloomsburg University in 2017 with a Bachelor of Science in Environmental, Geographical Sciences: Professional Geology and a minor in Spatial Analysis and GIS. Sullivan was a letterwinner on the swim and dive team where he competed in the breast and sprint free. After graduating, he worked as an environmental consultant for AKT Peerless for three years and as a lab technician for Dominion Engineering Associates. Sullivan has also helped coach the Rappahannock Area Stingrays senior and junior groups since March of 2021.