By RICHIE HALL
Everything came full circle for Rich Wolfred as he finished up his final season of coaching swimming at Noblesville High School this school year.
When Wolfred came to Noblesville in 2004, he had already been a longtime coach for the Lawrence Swim Team, and would finish his first season for the Millers with a state champion under his watch. In 2020, Wolfred completed another long run as a coach, and supervised another state champion.
Indeed, what goes around comes around. And Wolfred had plenty of success to go around at both NHS and the Noblesville Swim Club.
Prior to coming to the Millers, Wolfred had spent 19 years as the head coach at Lawrence, in addition to coaching at Lawrence Central High School in the 1980s for “two or three years,” he said.
When the Noblesville job became open, two things drew Wolfred up here: First, he said his sister-in-law Cindy “was pushing me to come up here.” Then he got a look at the facilities, noticing that the NHS pool “was one of the better pools around.” He also liked the outdoor pool at the Forest Park Aquatic Center, which hosts the annual Enchanted Forest meet.
Wolfred got the job at both the high school and the swim club, and it would be a full-time job as well, something else that was appealing.
“Before that, I always had other jobs,” said Wolfred. “The coaching was more of a full-time/part-time kind of thing. I worked during the day and coached at night. When I came up here, I said, ‘You got to be able to pay me enough so I didn’t have to have a second job.’ They were very good about coming up with the money.”
Thus Wolfred began coaching the swim club, plus both the boys and girls high school teams. He proved his worth quickly, first when it came to increasing participation in the club. When Wolfred arrived, there were about 60 swimmers registered with the club.
“The first couple years, we were up to 120,” said Wolfred. The boys teams were always nine, 10, 12 kids. We were able to get it up to 20, 25 kids. The girls were probably like 20, 25 girls and it got up to 50 girls at some point.”
Another key point was to have the high school swimmers also swim in the club. Wolfred estimated that 50 percent of the high school swimmers were active in the Noblesville Swim Club, but that number increased to 80 to 90 percent.
“It’s nice to coach kids year-round instead of just part of the season,” said Wolfred.
When Wolfred arrived, the Millers were having success at sectionals, with the girls on a five-year championship winning streak and the boys having won in three titles in the past five years. Noblesville continued that success, with both boys and girls winning sectionals in 2005-06-07.
Also in 2005, a Millers sophomore named David Boudia won the diving state championship. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because Boudia would go on to win an Olympic gold medal in 2012.
“He brought some notoriety to Noblesville,” said Wolfred. “Having David at the high school, and then Michael Phelps and the explosion of swimming nationally helped tremendously.”
Around the same time, Wolfred got a great assistant in Bret Richardson, who stayed with the team for 14 years. Wolfred said that every coach “needs a Bret Richardson,” calling him “someone you can lean on.”
“Anything you asked him to do, he’d do it,” said Wolfred. “It’s hard to find people like that.”
“When my middle daughter joined the NHS team and club in 2005, I heard how much the athletes loved and respected Rich,” said Richardson. “I joined him as a volunteer assistant and was hooked for the next 14 years. Rich always had the best interest of the individual at heart; he coached so he could make great adults out of these young people. A by-product of his mentoring were also state champions, national qualifiers, and many swimmers that were able to join college teams.”
In the 2007-08 season, Carmel was moved into the Noblesville sectional. The Greyhounds have been a powerhouse in swimming for decades, with the girls having won 34 consecutive state championships (and counting) and the boys multiple state titles as well.
“We always held our own,” said Wolfred. While the Greyhounds have been sectional champions every year since moving in, the Millers girls have been a strong second, and the boys were also consistently runners-up until the past couple of years, when they were a strong third.
“There were some good meets,” said Wolfred. “We were winning events.”
That included more diving state championships. Katie Bittner won state in diving in 2009, then Meghan Potee followed her with a state title in 2010. The Millers also had a number of state qualifiers every year as well.
On Feb. 15, 2020, Noblesville got one more state championship for Wolfred. Sammy Huff won the breaststroke event, coming from behind to emerge victorious in a close race. Afterwards, Huff said she wanted to win the race for Wolfred, since it was his last season.
“Obviously, she wanted to win,” said Wolfred. “But she never expressed that to me prior.” Wolfred said he tries to stay out of the limelight, noting that it’s his swimmers in the water doing the job. But he did recognize that the occasion was special.
“I was nervous as heck before the race and the race was very close,” said Wolfred. “I think four girls could’ve won that race, but she was determined to come in first, which was pretty cool to watch.”
Wolfred also got to watch his three children, sons Alex and Jack and daughter Jordan, swim for Noblesville as well.
“I never really gave much thought to coaching my own kids,” said Wolfred. “It was nothing I ever thought about until they became old enough to swim.”
But it was rewarding for Wolfred to watch them be successful. Alex went on to swim at Xavier University and Jack is swimming at Ball State University.
In addition to his family, Wolfred made connections with the other swim families as well. As much as any other sport, multiple children from the same family usually wind up swimming.
“Most of these families, they become your kin,” said Wolfred. He noted that with social media so prevalent, it’s easy to become families with the other swimming families.
“I touch base with a lot of the alumni on a yearly basis to see how they’re doing,” said Wolfred.
As for the school and club, Wolfred has handed the reins to Aleks Fansler, the new coach of both. But Wolfred will still be around, saying that he will “probably” substitute coach for Fansler at times.
And, as he has been doing for decades, Wolfred will continue to introduce new swimmers to the pool.
“I’m still currently running the swim program, Noblesville Learn to Swim,” said Wolfred. “Aleks wanted me to stick around and complete that.”