You can find him in the office on the pool deck; the one that used to be a graduate assistant’s office. The office is hot – a fan hums constantly swirling the warm pool air. Near water is where he’s been for most of his life, and where it’s hard to pull himself away.
To say that Matt Ense, DePauw’s new head women’s swimming coach, is invested in his new job would be an understatement.
He wanted to be close to the pool to always be accessible to his swimmers, close to where he says he’s pouring his entire life into. He was hired to replace legendary DePauw head coach Mary Bretscher, who retired following the conclusion of last year’s season.
Bretscher built the program from scratch 37 years ago. Ense, who was hired in June, hopes he can mirror Bretscher’s legacy -and create his own.
He certainly has the energy to do it.
“I’m invested,” Ense, 32, said. “I kind of live here. I’ll be here all weird hours emailing recruits. I want to win. I always ask the kids ‘Do you like winning or hate losing?’ and I hate to lose.”
The Cincinnati native grew up near a lake, and his mother enrolled him in swimming lessons when he was just two years-old. At age five, he joined a YMCA swim club, and his first meet was at Wittenberg University.
He was a distance swimmer – the 500-yard and one-mile events – in high school and at Eastern Michigan University. He was a five-time Mid-American Conference champion, and competed in the 2000 U.S. Olympic Trials where he finished ninth in the five-kilometer event.
After he graduated in 2002, he spent a fifth year at Eastern Michigan finishing up his degree in business administration. He got his first taste as a volunteer coach for his Eastern Michigan team.
“That’s where I really found the passion for coaching,” Ense said.
He went back home to his old YMCA swim club to help coach while he looked for any coaching positions. His search came up empty, so his passion went dormant for about two years and worked as an investment banker for Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bank.
In 2005, he, along with his two sisters, took part in a coaching staff at all-girl’s St. Ursula Academy in Cincinnati. He coached for two seasons, and one day in 2007, Ense was in the basement of the bank when he found a St. Ursula roster in one of his binders.
“Five hours after that I put in my two-week notice and started looking for coaching jobs,” he said. “It took me awhile, but I went up to Union College as an assistant coach.”
He coached at Union from 2007-2008 when an opportunity to coach the world’s best swimmers was available after Union’s swim season.
Before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Ense traveled to the Florida Keys to coach with the best coaches in the world at the selective training institution, The Race Club.
On the deck, he had the privilege of coaching London Olympics USA gold medalist Nathan Adrian, and renowned Serbian swimmer Milorad ÄaviÄc.
With such great mentors and athletes around him, Ense soaked up the experience.
“It was like a who’s who of swimming down there,” he said. “Working with Mike, he taught you to think outside the box. On the spot, it was ‘Come up with a set with this set of bleachers.’ We would take lounge chairs and make these guys do jumps over them.”
His list of notable swim coach mentors doesn’t stop there: during his college summers, he swam at University of Michigan under head coach Jon Urbanchek, who coached the Wolverines for 22 years and won 13 Big Ten Championships.
“I’ve seen a lot of different coaching philosophies and how you handle people,” Ense said.
His final mentor was Denison University’s Gregg Parini. Ense was hired after his experience at The Race Club and was a part of the Big Red men’s and women’s programs win four NCAC titles apiece in his four years on staff, including the men’s Div. III national titles in 2011 and 2012.
With all the knowledge Ense has in and out of the pool, he thinks his main strength isn’t his coaching ability, instead, recruit talent.
In more than a month of being hired, Ense said he’s traveled to Miami (Ohio), Atlanta and Chicago to meet with potential swimmers.
“Being a bank manager really helped me to reach out to people – it’s not easy to do,” he said. “I chose to go to Atlanta instead of going on vacation. I put this above everything else, and that’s a good thing because this is my life.”
That type of energy is what got Ense hired in the first place, according to Stevie Baker-Watson, DePauw’s athletic director. When three final candidates were selected to come to campus, that’s when the selection got tough, and when Ense set himself apart.
“He’s Mr. Bubbles,” Baker-Watson said. “Matt had high energy from the start. He just takes such great pride in coaching. … The search was close, and what really set him apart was his attitude.”
So how invested is Ense in DePauw?
“I see DePauw being my final stop if it could be,” he said. “I could see this team contending for a national title down the road. In five years, we can be pushing top five. We have a winner here that’s waiting to come out of its shell.
“We only had a six lane pool at Denison, with the 12-lane pool here. … I can pull out a lot of tricks.”
