For a sport as unique as competitive swimming, Mark Sowa decided to come to a place as unique as Moscow.
The University of Idaho’s first year swim and dive coach traveled more than 2,600 miles for his new job, a decision he said was one of the best he ever made.
“I had no idea what to expect when I arrived in Moscow,” he said. “I fell in love with this town and university from the get-go. It’s a tremendous place.”
Sowa was born and raised on the East Coast. He grew up in New England and spent his last three years coaching in Staten Island, at Wagner College. He said UI’s distinct emphasis on Olympic sports brought him to Moscow.
“Really what brought me to Moscow was (athletic director) Rob Spear. I really am impressed with what he’s doing,” Sowa said. “He really feels like the Olympic sports are important as well — he wanted us to be a priority. That’s the department I want to be involved in.”
Sowa said one of the first things he did upon arriving at Idaho was assemble a staff he says makes his job “radically better — easier.”
The two he brought to the program were Chelsea Oats, who leads the diving team, and Ashley Jahn, the assistant swim coach. He said both coaches are capable of being head coaches of a program someday.
Sowa brings more than 10 years of coaching experience with numerous stops along the way. Prior to coming to Moscow and before leading the Wagner program, he worked in the Bahamas leading his club team to national championships. He’s also worked at Brown and Harvard universities as an assistant coach.
More important than his years as a coach, are Sowa’s 30-plus years of lifetime involvement in the sport.
“I can’t remember a time when I haven’t swam,” Sowa said. “My mother taught swimming lessons out of our back yard pool. I joined my first swim team when I was 6.”
Sowa became a coach shortly after graduating college. He began coaching as a part-time job during graduate school to make ends meet. Brown offered him an opportunity to become a full-time coach, and he jumped at it.
Sowa said his goal was to someday become a teacher or a professor, and in his eyes, he is.
“Our classroom is the pool,” he said. “That’s how I approach it day-to-day. I try to point these ladies in the right direction. At the end of the day the athletes are the ones that decide the direction of the program.”
Sowa said his experiences with the sport have taught him about the kind of program he envisions at Idaho.
“What I learned was you really got to look at the right type of athlete. You have to make sure that the athlete you bring in first and foremost wants to be at the institution that you coach at,” he said. “It’s really important to recruit the person and recruit the individual … I want somebody that wants to be a representative of the university as a whole.”
Sowa said he firmly believes the vision he has for student-athletes will make Idaho a desirable place for recruits in the Pacific Northwest on par with the programs at Seattle University, Oregon State and Boise State — the premier teams in the region.
In his time outside of the UI Swim Center, Sowa can be found perusing Moscow’s vintage record stores collecting vinyl records, a hobby of his.
“I can’t believe there’s two record shops in Moscow … and right across the street from each other,” he said.
Mark Sowa, indeed, feels at home in Moscow.