David Durden is entering his second season as head coach for the Maryland men's and women's swimming programs. He was hired as head coach August 18, 2005. During the 2005-06 season, he led the women's team to a 7-5 overall record, 4-4 ACC record, and fifth place finish at the ACC Championships where one woman, senior Sasha Malanina (Volgograd, Russia), was an ACC Champion in the 400-IM. Last year, he coached `06 graduate Krisztina Kovacs (Budapest, Hungary) and senior Sasha Malanina, who were both named All-American Honorable Mentions at the 2006 NCAA Championships. He also led the 2005-06 Maryland men's team to an 8th place finish at the 2006 ACC Championships.
"Having an opportunity to get my first head coaching job at one of the top spots in the Atlantic Coast Conference is great," said Durden.
Durden spent the last five seasons at Auburn University, including the last season as the assistant head men's coach for the 2005 NCAA National Championship Team. Prior to that, he was an assistant coach for both the men's and women's programs at Auburn.
"We feel that we've found an outstanding coach who knows what it takes to establish and lead a winning program," said Associate Athletics Director Troy Tucker. "He shares our values related to the balance between athletics, academics and student-athlete welfare."
In his time at Auburn, the Tiger men's and women's teams won six national team championships - the men winning in 2003, 2004 and 2005, and the women winning in 2002, 2003 and 2004. The Auburn women finished second at the NCAA Nationals in 2005.
Durden has also spent time at Auburn as the primary coach for a number of world-class, postgraduate swimmers who were preparing for World Championship and World University Games teams. He was the primary coach for multiple World Record Holders and NCAA Record Holders as well as the men's recruiting coordinator.
In 2004, Durden coached three swimmers who represented the United States at the Olympic Games. Durden served as the head coach for the Panama team at the 2004 Olympic Games and the 2003 Pan-American Games.
He is a NCAA Division I Certified Coach, a member of U.S. Swimming and a member of the American Swimming Coaches Association. For the past five years, he has been involved with the swim camps at Auburn, serving as the director last season.
Before coaching at Auburn, Durden served as an assistant for Irvine Novaquatics and Dr. Dave Salo, where he assisted in general coaching with the Olympic Trials Group and helped place four swimmers on the 2000 U.S. Olympic Team.
Durden is a 1998 graduate of the University of California-Irvine and earned a degree in electrical engineering.
Coach Durden can be contacted at ddurden@umd.edu
