Ed Bartsch is in his seventh season as an assistant swimming coach at Penn State. His main responsibility is coaching the distance swimmers.
His distance swimmers once again had a very successful year last season. Five women[apos]s swimmers scored in both the 200 and 500 freestyle at Big Ten Championships while four more scored in the 1650 free. Additionally, school record holder Nikki Collins broke her own record again in the 1650 free at NCAA[apos]s in the final swim of her Penn State career as she once again garnered All-American honors.
On the men[apos]s side last year, Chris Sullivan broke the school records in both the 1000 and 1650 freestyle at Big Ten Championships as he was one of three swimmers to finish in the top 16 in the 1650 free.
At Big Ten Championships in 2006, four Penn State women[apos]s swimmers finished in the top eight in the finals of the 500 freestyle, including a second place finish by Erin Morris, and six placed in the top 16. Three swimmers placed in the top eight of the 1650 freestyle final, including a second place finish by Nikki Collins and four swimmers finished in the top ten and five placed in the top 16 in the 1650. At the NCAA Championships, Collins put together an All-American performance, taking sixth place in the 1650 freestyle, the top Big Ten finisher in that event.
In the summer of 2006, another distance swimmer, Claire Hawley, finished second in the 25k event of the U.S. Open Water National Championships. WIth her performance at that event, she qualified for the Open Water World Championships in Naples, Italy at the end of the summer, one of just eight swimmers in the country to be named to the team.
Bartsch has an extensive coaching background, including six years at the helm of the Villanova Wildcats men[apos]s and women[apos]s teams, where he won two Big East women[apos]s titles ([apos]95 and [apos]96), had 17 Big East relay titles, 11 All-Americans, one NCAA individual champion, one Olympian and a top 20 team finish at the 1999 Women[apos]s NCAA Championships. Prior to his successes as head coach at Villanova, Bartsch led the Philippine Olympic team to eight Philippine National records at the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
Bartsch also piloted Team Trojan, in Los Angeles, Calif., from 1989-1992, where his swimmers won seven gold medals in the 1991 Southeast Asian Games, three silver medals at The World Student Games and four U.S. Swimming Individual National Championship Titles, while establishing one world record.
An illustrious swimming career of his own included winning the 1963 NCAA title in the 200-yard backstroke, a PanAm games gold medal in the 100-meter backstroke, NCAA All-American and captain of the University of Michigan swim team (1965).
Bartsch has a Bachelor of Arts (Michigan, `65), a Masters of Business Administration (SMU, `68), and post-graduate study in the field of finance at the University of Oklahoma (`71). Bartsch joined the Penn State Swimming staff in the fall of 2001.
Bartsch[apos]s hobbies include golfing and sailing.