Seven to Remember
From 1995 to 2013, seven Williams coaches, two of them alumni, have been cited among Eph athletes in Sports Illustrated magazine’s “Faces in the Crowd.”
In 1995, men’s and women’s swimming coach Carl Samuelson, then 63, was named women’s NCAA Division III (DIII) coach of the year for the third time. When he retired in 1999, after 33 years at Williams, he had coached hundreds of All-Americans and 36 DIII champions. Williams’ Samuelson-Muir pool was named after him and coach Robert B. Muir in 2000.
In 2003, men’s basketball coach Dave Paulsen ’87 led the Ephs to a DIII national title and was named DIII coach of the year, an honor he won again in 2004, when the team was national runner-up. He left Williams in 2008 for Bucknell University, then George Mason University, and now coaches at College of the Holy Cross. “It was inspiring to coach young men who were passionate about pursuing excellence on the court on a daily basis just as they did in the classroom and in all their other endeavors,” says Paulsen. “In the eight years I coached at Williams, I felt like the college embraced the ideal that academic and athletic excellence were compatible goals and not mutually exclusive.” He notes being “inspired and supported on a daily basis” by former Director of Athletics Harry Sheehy ’75, who was Paulsen’s coach when he was a student.
In 2009, Justin Moore, Williams’ women’s crew coach, guided the U.S. Junior national team’s women’s eight to a gold medal at the World Rowing Junior Championships and a berth in the Youth Olympic Games in Singapore. In spring 2012, Williams was undefeated and won its fourth consecutive DIll title. “We had the best DIII crew in the country” from 2000-2002 and 2006-2010, he says. He became a chief coach at Hydrow in 2018 and opened Lowe Island Fish Camp in Essex, Mass., in 2021. Throughout his career, Moore has coached three Oympians and presented at many conferences.
In 2010, women’s tennis coach Alison Swain ’01, in her third year as coach at Williams, led the Ephs to their third straight DIII title. She was co-captain of the 2001 national championship team, making her one of only two women in DIII tennis history to win titles as a player and a coach. She holds the distinction of winning six national championships in her first six years of coaching and in 2013 was named the Intercollegiate Tennis Association National Coach of the Year. She moved to the University of Southern California (a DI school) in 2017, where she continues to coach winning teams. “My time coaching at Williams shaped my coaching philosophy, which I have now brought to Power 4/DI coaching,” says Swain.
Also in 2010, Aaron Kelton, the NESCAC’s first African American head football coach, was named conference football coach of the year after leading Williams to a perfect record in his first season, the first coach in the program’s 125-year history to do so. He is now head coach at Savannah (Ga.) State University, where he is active in community service. Kelton says, “I still have so many young men who reach out to me daily and check on their old coach. And I still have parents who say thank you for helping to raise and positively influence their son’s life. I coach for those reasons!”
In 2012, Steve Kuster, then in his 13th year coaching men’s and women’s swimming, was named the national women’s coach of the year for the third straight time at the DIII championships. His men’s and women’s teams each won the NESCAC title, giving Kuster a combined 24 conference crowns. In his almost 26 years at Williams—and counting—the men and women have captured 41 NESCAC titles and had 198 All-Americans. Before coming to Williams, Kuster graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, where he held the 200-fly record from his senior year until 2012; he also earned a master’s degree in education from Harvard University in 1999. “The best part of coaching at Williams has by far been the student athletes that I’ve gotten to work with,” he says.
In 2013, men’s soccer coach Mike Russo, then in his 34th year as coach at Williams, won his 400th career match. His career-winning percentage of .777 (415-103-58) ranked seventh all time in DIII. The first to win back-to-back national collegiate soccer Coach of the Year honors (1987 and 1988), Russo had four of his players go on to play in national team matches.