Juliet Suess (they/them) officially became the Head Coach of the men's and women's swimming & diving teams on August 1, 2022 and will enter their fourth season leading both programs. Chapman swim & dive has surged forward under Suess's leadership.
Suess garnered SCIAC Coaching Staff of the Year honors in back-to-back seasons to begin their tenure, first earning the award for the women's swimming & diving team, and most recently the men's team in 2023-24. They were also named the 2024 NCAA Division III LGBTQ Coach of the Year, accepting the award during a ceremony at the NCAA Convention.
The program's resurgence has seen swimmers and divers to produce well over-100 new school records. The Panthers have also sent at least one participant to the Division III Swimming & Diving Championships in each of Suess's first three seasons and claimed six event titles at the SCIAC Championships. Chapman had six event champions in the previous 10 years. The
They had a successful career on the Occidental College swim team before moving on to coach at Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, helping the Stags and Athenas to multiple SCIAC championships.
At Occidental, Suess was a team captain and five-time All-SCIAC swimmer. As a freshman in 2011, they won the 200 freestyle title at the SCIAC Championships. They were All-SCIAC in the 200 free in 2013 and a member of three All-SCIAC relays in the course of their career. They also broke multiple school records.
As a Fullbright Scholar, Suess spent nine months in Germany upon graduating from Occidental. They returned to the United States and began their coaching career at Oxy as an assistant coach for the 2015-16 season. They helped the men's and women's team break 10 combined school records that year while also taking on a recruiting role.
In the fall of 2016, Suess moved to Claremont-Mudd-Scripps as the Recruiting Coordinator and Assistant Coach. While at CMS, they recruited several SCIAC champions and an eventual NCAA Division III champion as well as multiple swimmers that became All-Americans. They were a part of two SCIAC Team Championships for the Athenas and three for the Stags.
After the 2017-18 season, Suess accepted a job as an English and Communications teacher at Harvard-Westlake but continued to coach at CMS and eventually earned their Master's from the Claremont Graduate School in English. They moved to The Buckley School in 2021 as an English teacher and Head Swim Coach.
Suess received the Jean Freeman Scholarship in 2018 to attend the College Swim Coaches Association of America's annual convention and Coach Academy – given annually to just six assistant coaches across the nation and all divisions of collegiate swimming.
