When Braden Holloway finished his swimming career at NC State back in 2001, he left the program as one of its most decorated student-athletes of all time. Holloway was named to the ACC all-conference team four straight years, and was a five-time All-American during his time with the Wolfpack. A year later, Holloway was named to the ACC 50th Anniversary Team.
Today, Holloway is back at State, this time as the head coach of the swimming team. He has been in charge of the program since 2011. Holloway has coached the men’s team to back-to-back ACC Championships, and both the men’s and women’s teams finished in the top 10 at the NCAA Championship last year. The opportunity to be back at his alma mater helping it win means a lot to Holloway.
“I think it’s definitely pretty special,” Holloway said. “I fell in love with this place when I was in high school and to now be here with my wife and my kids, to experience everything that NC State has to offer, especially in the city, it just has a special meaning. The traditions that we have here, I’ve been a part of for a long time, so it just runs deep.”
Holloway’s success when he was an athlete for the Wolfpack has transcended into his time here as a coach. He knows what it takes to win, especially at State, and he is instilling that into the student-athletes that he is coaching. For Holloway, the key to it all is hard work.
“NC State is a blue collar-type team,” Holloway said. “We come in, we go to work and then we’re done. We embrace hard work, we thrive for hard work, we have a passion toward hard work. When I was an athlete here I wasn’t the tallest guy. I wasn’t the fastest guy in the country or anything like that. But I worked hard. So, I think that gave me a strong work ethic that I’m able to pass along through my staff and to our team. There’s no other way to do it but work hard.”
Holloway is the head coach, but he credits a lot of the success of the team to the rest of his coaching staff as well. The importance of having a good coaching staff behind him is clear to Holloway and he believes that he has one of the best group of coaches around him.
“The first thing is I hired a great staff,” Holloway said. “I have a hardworking staff. We get along great together and we have fun together. They all bought into the vision that we set forth when we first got here.”
Holloway has high praises for his staff, who in turn have a high level of respect for him, according to associate head coach Todd DeSorbo. DeSorbo has been with Holloway for all five years at State and he emphasized how good of a leader and a manager for the students Holloway is, as well as his ability to manage the coaching staff.
“He demands excellence,” DeSorbo said. “From a managing staff perspective, he’s done a great job keeping his staff happy and keeping everything exciting. We have a lot of fun together. He doesn’t micromanage, which is really key. There’s a lot of head coaches out there that won’t allow their associate heads, or assistant coaches, to do much of anything. They micromanage and they want to have a hand in everything, but Braden does a really good job of saying ‘Hey Todd take the sprinters and do what you do.’”
The ability to hold personal records and compete with people from your own school in that aspect is something that makes swimming unique. When Holloway started coaching for NC State, he still held school records in both the 100-meter backstroke and breaststroke. Since then, both records have been beaten by more than two seconds, and by more than five different student-athletes. However, Holloway embraces seeing the guys he coaches break his records.
“The part of it that meant the most to me was that they were broken by really good kids,” Holloway said. “I saw how much they worked to break those records. I saw what they put into it and it just made me feel good. Obviously, I know that records are meant to be broken, and hopefully those records that they have are going to be broken in four years or less.”
While Holloway was swimming for State he also took part in the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials in the 100-meter backstroke, but did not go to Sydney, Australia for the games. This year he did get the privilege of seeing four student-athletes from the program participate in the Olympics. Anton Ipsen, Simonas Bilis, Soren Dahl and Ryan Held competed for their respective countries in Rio this summer, with Held winning a gold medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay. For Holloway, being able to see four of his swimmers succeed on this level was special.
“It’s pretty rewarding,” Holloway said. “For four kids to fulfill their dream, it was rewarding just to see the smiles on their face. How many people actually dream that? And very, very, very few are even close to it coming true and they got to live their dream.”
Under Holloway, the program has found success and stability. With a young coaching staff around him, Holloway has set State swimming up to be both an ACC and national powerhouse for years to come.
