Former NCAA Division III national champion Mark Schmitt '06 returned to North Central prior to the 2015-2016 academic year as the Cardinals' head men's and women's swimming and diving coach.
In the 2016 season, the women's swimming team placed 7th of 8 in the CCIW Swimming Championships.
The 2006 NCAA Division III national champion in the 200-yard backstroke and a five-time Division III All-American, Schmitt brings several years of coaching experience at the competitive club level to the position, as well as a four-year stint as an assistant coach at North Central from 2009 to 2013.
Schmitt most recently served as the lead senior coach at the Maverick Swim Club in Naperville, with which he worked from 2008 to 2014. He coached multiple national-level swimmers and Illinois state champions for a club which saw more than 50 student-athletes continue their careers in college during that time. He also served as head coach for Naperville's Hobson West Swim Club from 2011 to 2013, more than doubling the club's size and increasing point totals at conference championship meets by more than 300 percent.
As an assistant coach at North Central, Schmitt developed the program's weight-training program and acted as liaison and translator on competitive trips to Florida, Costa Rica and Puerto Rico.
Schmitt spent two years on the men's swimming team at the University of Iowa before transferring to North Central, where he was a team captain and five-time College Conference of Illinois & Wisconsin (CCIW) individual champion before graduating in spring 2006 with a bachelor's degree in psychology.
