Matt Tallman enters his 12th season at Notre Dame and his seventh as associate head coach. Tallman spent his first five campaigns serving as assistant coach for the Fighting Irish before assuming his associate position in July 2006.
Tallman joined the Irish staff in 2001, shortly after the Notre Dame Athletic Department announced that each of the University's 26 varsity sports would receive full funding. With increased scholarship aide, he has made the Irish competitive with the top programs in the nation on the recruiting front by attracting some of the country's top prep prospects.
His recruiting efforts have produced some of the top classes in the history of the program - including the 14th-best incoming class in 2009-10 and 12th-best in 2010-11, which in turn has made Notre Dame a factor on the national scene.
In addition to recruiting, Tallman assists head coach Tim Welsh in all facets of the Irish swimming and diving program, including on-deck coaching and teaching, training, supervising dryland workouts and day-to-day operations.
The efforts of Tallman have also paid dividends in the pool, as the Irish have broken 110 University records over the last 11 years. He has mentored 50 BIG EAST champions and all 14 individual Irish record holders, including 2012 All-American Frank Dyer and Bill Bass, the second and third all-time Notre Dame men's swimming NCAA Championship qualifiers.
Dyer's fourth-place finish in the 200 free at the 2012 NCAA Championships earned him the distinction of being the first men's swimming All-American in school history.
Another of Tallman's charges, 2005 NCAA Championship participant Tim Kegelman, was the first Notre Dame swimmer to make an appearance at the national meet, swimming the 100 fly, 200 fly and 200 IM.
Tallman helped guide the Irish to their first BIG EAST championship in 2005, and the Irish have repeated as champions in 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2012. The stretch is the most successful in the history of Notre Dame swimming and diving.
The 2012 Notre Dame squad set nine school records and sent two swimmers to the NCAA Championships for the first time in the same season. Nine of the team's upperclassmen (sophomores and above) set personal-bests in at least one event during the campaign, with six athletes setting fastest marks in multiple strokes. The Irish won seven events at the 2012 BIG EAST Championships, scoring 887 points to edge Louisville for the conference's top crown. The 887 points scored were the second-most for Notre Dame at the BIG EAST meet in program history (902.5 points-2005).
The 2008 BIG EAST champion Irish program set eight then-school records and peaked at No. 17 in the Collegiate Swimming Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) rankings.
In 2005-06, the Irish climbed to No. 18 in the rankings for what was then a program-best mark. Notre Dame appeared in the CSCAA dual meet rankings for the first time ever in the fall of 2004, debuting at No. 21.
The 2003-04 campaign featured the Irish posting their highest-ever point total in the BIG EAST Championships to that point (584) en route to their first runner-up result in four years. Among the high points of the meet was Notre Dame's first-ever 1-2 finish at the conference meet, which took place in the 400 IM.
Tallman was also instrumental in preparing and presenting a proposal to the NCAA to institute a new selection process for the Division I Swimming Championships. Thanks to Tallman's efforts, the NCAA Championship Cabinet approved the new process, which will take effect at the 2013 NCAA Championships.
Prior to his stint at Notre Dame, Tallman served as an assistant at the University of Maryland in 2000-01. He helped the Terrapins send a school-record number of women's qualifiers to the NCAA Championships as Maryland peaked at 16th in the national rankings that season, its highest listing in school history.
Prior to his stop at Maryland, Tallman spent two years as the head swimming coach at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. While at IUP, he was selected as the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference Coach of the Year in 1999 after helping the women's team to the PSAC title, ending Clarion University's 23-year stranglehold on the championship. He also led the IUP women's team to sixth- and seventh-place finishes at the NCAA Division II championships. In his two seasons at IUP, the women's squad was 18-0 in dual meets.
Fifteen IUP swimmers achieved All-America honors under Tallman's tutelage while 18 swimmers earned all-PSAC accolades and five student-athletes were named Academic All-Americans.
A 1997 graduate of The Catholic University of America, Tallman swam for four seasons and captured 11 titles at the Capital Athletic Conference Championships. He set school and conference records in the 100 and 200 breast, along with the 200 and 400 medley relays.
Originally from Camden, N.J., Tallman has a number of Notre Dame connections. His father Dennis is a '73 graduate and his grandfather, Edgar F. Bailey, played football for the Irish in the 1940s.
Tallman married the former Heather Grzeskowiak in the summer of 2006. The couple, along with daughter Hannah, and son, Martin, resides in Mishawaka, Ind.
