Jacob Swinn, is Central Oregon Community Colleges new Sports Director. Swinn brings a wealth of experience as an Olympic trials coach, English teacher, and marketer to his role. With a goal to expand club sports, upgrade facilities, and connect with students across campuses. Swinn is dedicated to bringing a new light to the COCC sports program.
Q: Could you tell us a bit about your background? Where did you grow up, and what led you to COCC?
A: ”It’s a little bit of a non-traditional background for a role like this. I originally, like after high school, was a swim coach for over 10 years consecutively, including coaching in college. I coached at two different Olympic trials (2008, 2012), and I went to University of Oregon for my undergrad, and then I went back to school.
I went to USC (University of Southern California) and got a master’s in education, and I continued coaching at the high school level, but I was a high school English teacher for seven years. I went back to school again to the University of Oregon one more time and got an MBA in sports business and marketing. I graduated during COVID, so there were no sports jobs available.”
“I was lucky to get a job doing marketing at a tech company for four years, but wasn’t super passionate about it, you know…it was good money, but, when this job with COCC came up, it seemed like a perfect intersection of me being able to work with students and coach. At the same time, put some of my sports marketing; sports business degree to use a little bit. seemed like the perfect fit; so far, it’s been exactly that.”
Q: What inspired you to pursue a career in sports administration?
A: “I really think like athletics, sports has the opportunity to really make or break students’ college careers, like their academic careers. It could be high school or college, but this is in reference to community college. There’s so many opportunities for students, like right out of high school or non-traditional students to kind of just build a community outside of the classroom a little bit like being active, stress relief, mental health benefits, things like that.”
“I think it’s super cool to be able to impact students in that way, you know, I’ve done it as a teacher before, that has its ups and downs, but this is like pretty much win-win for me. It’s a way for me to stay involved with something (in) athletics that I’m passionate about while still working with students.”
Q: What do you enjoy most about working with students?
A: ”I think building the relationship with them and kind of figuring out, you know, for this job especially, what it is that they want. This job is really kind of a blank slate, I’m finding out, and which is really cool, you know, it’s really trying to learn from the students, listen to the students like what—what do they want? What do they want in the gym?”
”Talk to people about it, what clubs, what league sports? What kind of things do they want that can kind of help them be successful in school?I think that just being able to kind of have that relationship with students and continue to work with them in a way that’s not necessarily confined to only an English teacher teaching English.”
Q: How do you plan to enhance opportunities for students and the broader community?
A: “Yeah, like I said, I think the biggest thing is just talking to the students and the community, whether that’s through: just talking to them and passing here down the gym, if it’s like sending out surveys, having my face at like Welcome Week, orientation, things like that. I wanna hear from people about what they’re looking for.”
”I’m not just creating a baseball team because I want a baseball team.I want it to be what the students want, what the students need, that kind of thing. It’s really just getting in front of them every way I can. And that also goes for our outlying campuses, like Redmond, Prineville, Madras as well.
I’ve been to Redmond already. I’ve reached out to Madras a couple times. I’m working on things with them, but just trying to get in front of the students, trying to talk to the community and see what they want to see here and then figuring out how to make that work.”
Q: What are your three main goals for your time at COCC?
A: “Yeah, I would love to just increase the number of club teams we have.e don’t have intercollegiate athletics, but we have club sports, right now, we have, club soccer and club rugby. Those teams travel around and compete against other colleges. I mean, those teams kind of compete a little bit during part, but at the end of winter, we don’t have many other teams. So I’d really love to build out our list of like club team—club sports teams that people can participate on.”
“Getting updates to Mazama, I think. It’s like I said, it’s a great facility, but it— is one of the older buildings on campus, knowing we’re not just rebuilding the entire facility, but updating it. Getting equipment that’s maybe a little bit more functional, things like that. That’s probably number two.”
“Number three is just having a bit more of a presence on campus with students, I think, like I said, a lot of students when I would talk to them, even incoming freshmen didn’t even know we had a gym or anything like that. So just being better about the marketing around our athletics, facilities, and teams as a whole.”
Q: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
A:”just want to be super clear, if there’s things they want for the gym, if there are new intramural teams, if there’s sports, we (COCC) haven’t even thought of, if there are places around town that they think we could work with to get passes or anything like that. That’s what I’m here for, I’m here for the students.
Swinn concluded by stating he is here to bring any sport and club COCC students want on campus, Swinn’s office is Mazama room 111, he welcomes all students to talk to him.
