Garland Bartlett, the head coach of American University men's and women's swimming & diving, just finished her fourth season as head coach for the Eagles in a tenure that has been marked by success at the top and continued team progress. After seeing both squads move up in the Patriot League rankings and bringing in many young contributors, she’s excited to see what heights the program can reach.

Bartlett has been in the water for as long as she can remember. She started swimming at age four, inspired by her father, and spent summers at her local pool. Growing up, she could often be found playing sharks and minnows or diving for rings. “My dad was a swimmer all his life,” she said, “so he helped me with getting into lessons. And I just love the water.”

She played a variety of sports, but swimming stood out. “Swimming just really clicked and I absolutely loved it,” she said. “I loved my team, loved my coaches. Around ninth grade was when I started to just focus on swimming.”

The Conard, Conn., athlete found success in the pool. Bartlett was named to the Central Connecticut Conference All-Conference Team for the Western Division as a junior and a senior. In 2006, she was named to the team in the 200 free, 100 fly, and 400 free relay; she was named again in 2007 in the 200 free relay and 400 free relay. She also captained the Conard team that won the Class L Connecticut State Championship in 2007.

Swimming in college was a no-brainer for Bartlett. Her parents had both played college sports — her mother had played tennis at Rollins College before becoming the squash coach at Trinity College, and her father had played lacrosse at Colgate. Seeing her mother work with athletes day in and day out was a constant inspiration. “Seeing how she built her team, getting to know her athletes, I was like, ‘This is something I really want to do in college,’” she said.

She chose to attend Franklin & Marshall College, a liberal arts college in Lancaster, Penn., for its balance of academics and athletics. Bartlett, a butterfly and mid-distance freestyler, fell in love with distance events as a Diplomat, specifically the mile and 500 meters. “I had no expectations there,” she said. “I was able to surpass a lot of my goals.”

She found her stride in distance quickly, earning Centennial Conference silver medals in the 1,650 free and 800 free relay and bronze in the 500 free as a sophomore. And she didn’t stop there — her time in the 1,650 free was an NCAA B-cut, and she closed out the season with team MVP honors. Her personal best of 17:45.50 is still in the program’s record book, currently at eighth on their top-10 list. As a junior, she earned silver in the 1,650 again and bronze in the 800 free relay.

But her individual accolades weren’t her only driving force; Bartlett emphasized that swimming is a team sport. She helped her team win the Centennial Conference Championship in 2010, the third conference title in the program’s history and first title since 2005.
 

Coaching was a natural next step for Bartlett. Her mother, who coached squash at Trinity for 40 years, was a glimpse into the coaching world for her daughter. “I grew up at Trinity and then I just saw how well she connected with her athletes,” she said. “And I just loved how you could combine something that you love and then also help people. That’s when I wanted to try coaching and fell in love with it.”

After a season at The College of New Jersey, Bartlett found herself working in the same athletic department as her mother at Trinity, which had a graduate assistant program that allowed her to coach while earning her masters degree. “It was really fun because that was when I was just starting,” she said, “and sometimes I would go up to her office and be like, ‘I’m the worst coach ever. I don’t know what I'm doing.’ And just to have her encouragement was priceless.”

Her mother, who started coaching women in the 1980s, was a trailblazer and inspiration for Bartlett. “The way she’s built her team to be three-time national champions in squash has just been remarkable to see and I’m so proud of her,” she said. “She’s really helped shape my career.”

After Trinity, Bartlett spent a year as an assistant coach at Middlebury, an institution in the same conference as Trinity. In 2016, she applied to an assistant coaching position at American. The Patriot League, she said, had a similar balance between athletics and academics to the previous institutions she’d coached for. During the interview process, the people stood out to her.

“When I came in for my interview, the kids were just awesome,” she said. “And the head coach at the time really seemed like he would value me as an assistant. He really wanted me to help with recruiting — and that's something that I really take pride in. I love recruiting. So we hit the ground running and it was really fun.”

The program was small — only about 20 athletes in total in 2016 — but Bartlett took the opportunity to help grow the program. She spearheaded recruiting, filling spots in different strokes and distances while looking for athletes who fit the team’s values and goals.

In April of 2021, Bartlett became interim head coach when former head coach Mark Davin left the program. After only two months, AU made the title permanent. Starting during COVID was challenging, but with five years of experience with the Eagles, she was prepared to step up.

“I knew American. I knew the type of student athlete that would come here. I knew our goals as a program,” she said. “I already knew the other staff too, and they were very supportive. So it was a pretty easy transition.”

Now, coming off her fourth season as head coach, Bartlett has led extraordinary athletes to great heights. The best example of that success is grad student Mimi Watts. In Bartlett’s first season as head coach, Watts, a sophomore at the time, became the program’s first All-Patriot League honoree since 2011 after earning two silver medals and a bronze at the Patriot League Championships. In the following three seasons, Watts earned eight Patriot League golds.

“Mimi’s going to be a huge loss, but she's been such a great leader and her impact on the program is going to last for seasons to come,” Bartlett said. “So I think there's still a lot of good things coming.”

In the last four years, the swim program has broken more than 20 school records and swept the highest GPA in the athletic department every year. Bartlett takes pride in her athletes’ success in and out of the pool. “I want to help them succeed — obviously in the water, but also in the city with internships, with research that they’re doing,” she said. “It makes my job easier because it’s something that is known: We want to have the top GPA in the department and do really well academically.”

In the pool, Bartlett hopes to continue the team’s upward progression in the Patriot League standings. Both squads moved up in the conference this year — the women placed seventh and the men placed ninth — and Bartlett wants to keep the ball rolling.

“We’re going to get better every year,” she said. “A majority of our team was freshman [this year], so they still have a lot of room to grow. And it was a great learning experience for them all.”

Much of the team’s success, she said, comes from their belief in themselves. She believes that their belief will take them far as they continue working toward their goals in the coming years. “We’re a non-scholarship team,” she said, “so all these kids are here because they want to be here. The biggest thing is believing in the program, believing that we can be great.”