After last season, the LSU swim and dive team replaced its 20-season coach Doug Shaffer with former graduate assistant Drew Livingston.
In June 2022, Livingston made his return to LSU after a few years away. Livingston had an impressive collegiate career as a two-time NCAA champion on the one-meter springboard. Prior to coaching at LSU, Livingston worked at the University of Virginia, Princeton University and the University of Texas.
Before replacing Shaffer, he got the chance to work with him at LSU as a graduate assistant coach. Livingston thinks it’s special to be returning to LSU and different from the last time he was here.
“Coming from a different perspective where before I was a grad student and assistant coach, and for most of my experience here, did not think I was gonna go into coaching full time,” Livingston said. “So to be back as a head coach at you know, a different stage of my life. It’s got a different perspective, but it feels really good.”
Livingston’s relationship with Shaffer impacted his decision to come back to LSU.
“When we traveled, we were with each other a lot. So I got to see things from his side of things,” Livingston said.
Livingston found that having the previous relationship with Shaffer helped him start off in the right spot returning to LSU. Livingston was able to “loosely follow” the swim and dive team after his time as an assistant coach to Shaffer.
“It was a really cool opportunity to come in and take over for him,” Livingston said. “It wasn’t like I had to come in and restart everything. It was like I’m going to change some things, and there’s going to be some new stuff going on. But he left the program in a really good spot so I feel like he is, without sounding too cliche, handing off the torch.”
Even though Shaffer had a lot of success in his 20 seasons, Livingston expects to improve on that during his time at LSU. He holds an impressive resume having led eight Virginia divers to the NCAA Championships and assisted the LSU diving team to three of the six school records. With the program being handed over to him, he plans to help the divers grow and do even more moving forward.
“The idea is when you come in you can make an impact and grow and leave it better than you found it,” Livingston said.
Livingston plans to focus on each athlete’s individual goals and help them to achieve those goals. LSU was the highest scoring team in the SEC last year which is what Livingston hopes to achieve this year as well. Livingston’s biggest goals for this year are to improve on last year’s results, which will put them in a better spot in February 2023.
This weekend, LSU is hosting the Purple and Gold Intrasquad Meet. Livingston says that it’s a more relaxed event and that most of the athletes will be competing.
“It’s going to be fun,” Livingston said. “It’s definitely going to be more relaxed, but it just gives them the first opportunity to kind of break the training pattern and just do something a little bit different.”
