The UW-Milwaukee Panthers have thrived in pools across the nation this year under second year coach Kyle Clements. The men’s squad has achieved perfection after their win over UW-Green Bay, ending their regular season campaign with an unblemished 10-0 record. Meanwhile, the women’s team held their own as well, finishing off the regular season strong with an 8-3 win-loss mark.
Coach Kyle Clements has both of these teams primed and ready for the upcoming Horizon League Championships, which they will be hosting starting Feb. 22. Clements has been coaching here at Milwaukee for four years, two as an assistant coach and two more at the helm of the program.
Within those four seasons, although not as head coach, Clements has watched this senior class of fifteen grow from timid freshmen to leaders in the pool. He has seen them develop as people and leaders as they venture out into their careers and life after college.
“We have a lot of seniors on this team and a lot of them are record holders. So it’s going to be a bummer to see them go,” Clements said. “Five minutes per person to recognize these seniors is not nearly enough time to honor what they have done over four great years.”
Clements feels that this year’s success stems from years of recruiting and keeping the swimmers and divers with the right work ethic in the pools and in the classrooms as well.
“It’s just not good enough to be a good swimmer here at Milwaukee. You need to be a good student, you need to like to swim, you need to do all of the things necessary,” Clements said.
One of the seniors that came into the Milwaukee program with Clements was Kyle Trelka of Sturgeon Bay. He gave a few thoughts about senior day and the team’s mentality as the wins piled on top of one another.
“We didn’t really think about that at the beginning of the season,” Trelka said. “We just came in saying we’re going to work hard and give our best effort, and as the end of the season came along, we were like ‘well, yeah, this is pretty awesome.’”
Sky Boggio, Danielle Chapman, Shane Connor, Jordan Diel, Evan Green, Morgan Hearn, Brady Huemann, Sam Keele, Heidi Niespodzany, Maggie Pease, Nathan Rahe, Jennifer Schober, Kyle Trelka, Sarah Wardecke and Greg Wise make up the “Clements 15.” All have been a part of making this a winning program in recent years. The Horizon League tournament is right around the corner. Be sure to see these seniors give their all in their final encore with the black and gold.
Well, not quite accurate, though nice to see a good article about good young men (and the women should get pub, too) – these would be more accurately scripted as the JANSSEN 15, that is the coach (Erica Janssen) who was at UWM prior to and recruited all of the Seniors and Juniors. In fact, if you logically do the math, this is Clements’ second year as head coach thus the seniors would have been recruited as juniors or seniors in high school, so 4-5 years ago when Clements was not even at UWM as an assistant. Glad to see he is willing to take the credit and that he “developed” them – maybe he took the training methods, too. Let’s see how Clements’ recruits stack up over the next 4 years when these seniors and juniors are done collecting the hardware and his freshmen, sophomores, and incoming recruits perform – then if he wins, he should get credit along with them.
I think we are forgetting Dave Griffore here. Dave was the head coach that started turning that program around and he was the head coach the recruited that senior class. Janssen became head coach after those kids were recruited and brought Clements in. Yes she helped recruit that class but Clements would have helped recruit the Junior class before he took over the next year after Janssen bailed to Maryland Mid season. Clements has been the one there for 4 years (all the same years as those seniors. Clements has done well for himself, and the program is still getting better. I think the only fair thing to call those seniors is the UWM 15.
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