The UNC Wilmington men’s swimming and diving program has won 10 CAA titles, and the women’s team has won four. Coach Dave Allen can tell you that without hesitation.

The pioneer of both programs has collected 13 CAA coach-of-the-year awards in his 34-year tenure at UNCW. Allen can’t tell you that, even after taking a moment to think.

“I don’t know that off the top of my head,” Allen said with a smirk after briefly trying to tally the amount. “Joe Browning (sports information director) and those people keep tabs of that stuff—I don’t.”

When asked how both programs have maintained consistent success for decades, there is no mention of “I,” even though Allen is the only constant throughout the years. Instead, he credits “luck” and a “great staff of talented coaches.”

“We’ve been very fortunate,” he said. “We’ve always been somewhat lucky in this program in that we’ve gotten some good athletes to come here… and once they’ve gotten here, they have continued to work hard and they have improved. And that improvement is the thing that has really enabled us to stay towards the top of things.”

But, read between the lines and discover that that’s solid recruiting and skill development, priorities of any coach.

In 2001, UNCW allowed him to hire assistant coaches for the first time, according to Allen. “That was a tremendous help in our program, because when you’re dealing with the number of athletes that we are—60 some athletes—in our program, for one or two coaches to work with that and be able to develop those individuals, you just can’t do that.”

So, Allen deflects the credit to the people that all share an office with him: assistants Todd DeSorbo, Tiffany Clay and Marc Ellington. But, long before Allen had their help, he was still leading UNCW to wins.

In fact, since the inaugural 1977-78 season, the Seahawk men have had winning seasons in all but three years. The women’s first season came one year after that. They struggled initially with 11 consecutive losing seasons but have since found the winning column more often and have only had three seasons below .500 since the 1989-90 season.

Getting Allen to take any amount of recognition for nearly 400 dual-meet victories is more difficult than winning the 100m freestyle by dogpaddling.

At the Top

Allen prefers to be a big fish in a little pond.

It’s rare to have a coach experience so much success in one position at a mid-major level and not pursue and attain a promotion at the upper tier of Division I athletics.

But this is exactly where Allen wants to be. How much longer he’ll spend coaching UNCW swimming isn’t as clear, though. “I’m not exactly sure,” he said. “I know that I’m shooting to try to get at least three (more years) in, and the only reason I say that is because I get a letter from Social Security saying that’s when I can kick in my full social security, so I tag that in as a date, if you will.”

Allen’s longevity isn’t just rare in collegiate athletics, but it’s rare at UNCW, as well. The other 15 Seahawk programs have each averaged 6.8 head coaches in their respective histories, including 11 programs with at least five different head coaches. “I’ve been given the opportunity to be allowed to build a program,” he said. “And in today’s athletic environment, a lot of times that doesn’t happen.”

Despite a seemingly equal number of banners and championship signs as actual pool space, Allen still sees plenty of room for improvement and for the addition of more visual accolades.

“We want to keep winning on the men’s side,” he said. “We would also like to start moving up on a more regularly national level. We score fairly high every year on the mid-major poll, but we’d like to start putting people and scoring people at the NCAA Division I Championships on a regular basis, and then that would move us into a national poll with all the big schools.”

Then, Allen’s big-fish-in-a-little-pond mentality kicked in. “Even though we’re a mid-major school, we’d certainly like to aspire to compete against the bigger schools,” he said.

Of course, not all of Allen’s efforts concern just the men’s swimmers and divers. “We’ve been very fortunate with our women’s program,” he added. “We’ve won three titles, but we’d like to win more titles… that means we have to get a little more competitive on the women’s side and develop our depth a little more.”

The Seahawk women aren’t immune to Allen’s lofty goal of not only maintaining conference success but also venturing out to the national level. It may be unfamiliar waters, literally, but the godfather of Seahawk swimming is as confident as ever.

“I’ve enjoyed the association with the university,” Allen said, “and I’ve enjoyed trying to build this program up to be one that would not only be competitive, but one that the university would be proud of.”

The statement seemed best fit for a lavishing press conference speech announcing his retirement, but he insists there is still work left to do. However, when the time is right, Allen said he’ll step away.

Besides the number of CAA championships the UNCW swimming and diving teams has won, there’s another question that Allen answers without hesitation.

Will he retire as a Seahawk? “Absolutely,” he said. “Absolutely.”