Augie Busch could have never imagined his journey to get here.
It wasn’t easy. But Busch is much more at ease these days. He feels good about where he is.
And for Busch, that means he’s standing on the right pool deck with the right people, doing the right things.
“This is like Augie 2.0, quite frankly, and this is kind of a rebirth,” Arizona’s 45-year-old swimming coach said.
In April, Busch endured what he called “a little bit of a breakdown” that led to him to pursue therapy and re-evaluate his personal and professional life. In doing so, Busch says, he rediscovered his “why” — the reason why he gets up every morning.
It’s connection with players, something that often took a back seat to the leadership and administrative responsibilities that come with being a head coach.
“It’s like either this profession is going to kill me and or I’m just going to keep not being happy doing what I love; or I’m going to re-connect to what it is that I know I love about it or what it is that that drew me in to the passion in the first place,” he said. “And that was all about connection, relationships and having a young person trust you to take them to amazing places athletically and personally. Personal growth.”
Son also rises
To understand how far Busch has come, you need to start at the beginning.
The son of Arizona coaching legend Frank Busch, Augie received a degree from Arizona in 1998 after starting his college career at Ohio State, where he played volleyball. Busch coached swimmers at Arkansas before returning to the UA, where he spent the 2003-11 seasons as a Wildcats assistant. The UA won national championships in men’s and women’s swimming in 2008.
In 2011, Busch was named Houston’s women’s coach, a position he held for two years before moving on to Virginia. While in Charlottesville, Busch led the Cavaliers’ women’s team to three ACC championships; he was named the league’s Women’s Swimming Coach of Year those three seasons.
In July 2017, Busch returned to Arizona to take over the program that his father once led.
Expectations were high.
“If you would have asked me five years ago, based on what I was able to do with Virginia, what I was able to do in Houston on a smaller level (and) what I was able to do as an assistant coach here, I would have said, ‘I’m gonna crush this thing,’” Busch said.
That’s not quite what has happened. The men’s team has moved forward, climbing to No. 12 in the nation last season. The women’s team, however, hasn’t seen the same success, finishing 25th nationally last spring.
On dry land, the Wildcats have dealt with staff turnover, NCAA issues and player departures.
Assistant coach Cory Chitwood, who had been one of Busch’s assistants at Virginia, left the program. So did Beth Botsford, a former UA standout turned coach.
The UA was placed on two years’ probation in 2019 for an NCAA violation related to the diving program. And the Wildcats are still awaiting a ruling from the Independent Accountability Resolution process after the NCAA hit the program with two Level II infractions: one for arranging improper tryouts, and another for a lack of head coach responsibility. Busch said he expects the ruling to be made public soon.
Amid the IARP and NCAA issues, Busch said incidents within the women’s program — he called it a “soap opera” — disrupted the performances of the swimmers.
The tension built up for a few years, and the perception was certain players continually broke team rules. Things came to a head at this year’s Pac-12 Championships.
Busch knew he needed to reevaluate his program. The coach removed the athletes who he didn’t believe fit the culture of his program. Other swimmers transferred on their own. Some were critical of Busch on their way out.
“I think that the results aren’t what gave (the administration) pause. It’s that (I) allowed the minority on their way out — either through my removal or on their way out through transferring — that certainly got their ear and made them really question what was going on,” he said. “That might be that might have been the biggest sort of wake-up. You’re scared you might lose your job.”
Instead, Busch received a contract extension that will take him through the end of the 2024 season.
‘Heaviness’ hovers over pool
At the time of his hire, Busch may not have fully considered how difficult it would be to follow in his dad’s footsteps. Frank Busch’s swimmers won 48 individual NCAA titles and 31 relay titles during his time in Tucson. Busch was named Pac-10 Coach of the Year 11 times. When Frank Busch left the UA in 2011, it was to take over as Director of USA Swimming.
“Who wants to follow anyone that’s really successful, let alone if it was your father?” Frank Busch said. “But when you have such a love for for an institution, and it is your dream job, you’re not even sure what you’re about to jump into. And the next thing you know you’re in it because the people believe that you’re the one that’s capable of assuming that.”
Augie Busch felt the pressure to win right away, his father said. That he, as Frank Busch said, “needed to meet expectation a lot sooner than he really did.”
Augie Busch’s role at the UA was different than when he was an assistant. Head coaches simply have more responsibilities: They make difficult decisions, have hard conversations, set a program’s culture and deal with all administrative work. There’s recruiting, adherence to school and NCAA rules, and endless institutional and interpersonal issues that need addressing.
Busch called it “a heaviness,” and something that affected him as time wore on. Gone was the young, energetic assistant who was praised for his connection with swimmers.
Frank Busch understood. “Title change can be a trap in that ... it takes you out of what your strengths might be, your personality strengths,” he said. “The things that were once part of your personality, you feel a need to change that when your title changes. That really doesn’t need to happen. That’s a huge realization for anybody in any position doing anything when you realize: ‘I don’t need to reinvent myself here.’”
A new attitude
With the turmoil over, Augie Busch is finally able to breathe. He instituted a women’s team retreat to Mt. Lemmon and has changed the structure of practices. Now, on Tuesdays, the women lift earlier than the men and swim on their own.
The coach is more open and loose in practice now, similar to how he was as a Wildcats assistant more than a decade ago.
“Everybody can totally be themselves and it’s like a full judgment-free zone,” junior Maddy Burt said. “It feels like a family, and now walking into practice every day, everybody’s just so happy to be there. It’s just so much fun.”
UA assistant coach Roric Fink, who was on staff when Frank Busch was coaching and returned this offseason, said Augie Busch is the same coach he remembered from a decade ago.
“A lot of the reasons why kids swim so well for him was his ability to connect with the athletes, his personality, the bond and the trust that came from that bond that he would forge with the athletes because of that. That’s exactly what I see now out of him,” Fink said. “I see the guy that understands the importance of wearing the head coach hat, but at the same time has reconnected with that part of him that made him spectacular coach, the part that brought him above just a normal coach.
“I know there were some struggles in there. But the guy I see now is the guy that I knew from before.”
Busch said he’s stopped tying his self-worth to his team’s results, letting go of the past and standing in the present.
There’s no guarantee the coach’s new outlook will lead to faster times in the pool or Arizona’s return to the pinnacle of the sport. Busch knows that. But there are signs of improvement. The coach called a recent intrasquad scrimmage the best since he’s been at Arizona.
“It was crazy how good we were, and it ain’t going to stop,” Busch said. “We’re rolling. Some really good stuff is going on — deep, meaningful stuff that is truly lasting. It just feels so good to know that. There are a lot more smiles, a lot more fist bumps and it’s really cool. ... I can feel it when they’re on deck, and it’s so nice to just sense that they want to gather around me and talk, and there’s just absolutely no substitute for that.”
“... Just the relationships and the connection that I’m having with the team, it’s been a really important offseason for me to just do some really good soul-searching.... That’s really just got my mind in a different place, I think permanently in life (and) that benefits of my personal life, family life, and, obviously professional life. They’re all intertwined with this sort of interpersonal work, soul-searching, whatever you want to call it, that I’ve done and continue to do.
“It’s put me back in a really great place maybe for the first time since I was here as an assistant. That has led to reconnecting with my biggest why, if you will, and that was definitely the the interpersonal side of this thing. The connection with athletes, mainly relationships with athletes. It feels really good. It’s awesome.”
