Derek Sapp Reviews

Derek is a good guy with a nice family who overall does care for his athletes. He is understanding about athlete's mental health, flexible when it comes to class schedules, and supportive of professional development. Many people on the team are active members of the campus community because unlike at many other places, Derek allows you to be a full-time athlete, student, and person. With that being said, Derek is not a good coach and often a difficult person to work with. While I got along with Derek, I know others who continuously clashed with him. He is scattered in everything from the way he writes practices, to his inability to get an itinerary out on time, to his communication. He is not a detail-oriented coach, and once he identifies something wrong with your stroke, he repeats it for many years. He rarely comes up with an original idea for practice, and week after week, the team finds themselves doing the same things, on the same intervals, on the same day. Derek does not recruit intelligently, and the quality and number of recruits has decreased significantly since I joined in 2019. Recruiting is unbalanced, resulting in huge sprint and stroke groups (leading to frustratingly crowded practices) while IM and distance swimmers often have lanes completely to themselves. Worst of all, Derek treats full-time coaching like a part-time job. He struggles with childcare more than you can imagine. He routinely misses practices for personal issues, and has little to no availability during school hours. Swimmers are expected to work around their busy schedules to accommodate his limited availability- trying to schedule a meeting with him is impossible, and half the time he ends up cancelling it anyways. It is too bad that Derek is the head coach of this team, because the school is a great place filled with great people and supportive teammates. Admin allows these issue to persist, in part because the team practices at times when no one else is in the rec (and thus issues are not recognized), but also because they just don't care. Swimming is clearly a low-revenue sport not worth their time or effort, no matter the show of support they put on.

I had a great 4 years in a swimming sense. I improved, had okay years, and had bad years. It is part of the sport. but I genuinely believe I could have done better with a different head coach. For example, I had made a mistake senior year. A mistake that could have been moved on from quickly if Derek had the mental and emotional capacity to forgive someone of their mistakes. Instead I was met with rudeness, death stares when I walked past derek (I had a friend notice and inform me). I would ask a simple question, and he would yell the response back to me. There is no room for learning from your mistakes, you must be perfect at all times. Along with this, the lack of transparency is worrying. Itineraries are sent a day or two before a travel trip, if you question what is being done it is usually met with "because I said so" or "Because this is the right way", and worst of all, if there are any swimmer suggestions, they are met as though it is an insult. In any sport, once an athlete cannot communicate openly with a coach, the relationship is pointless. Looking at the results also, it seems like administration does not care for this program. It is sad to see a coach destroying a program with an administration that doesn't care. He will try to clean up his act from not showing up this year, but will return to his normal immature behavior come the fall. He did not show up to practices this year due to child care responsibilities that should have been taken care of out of work. It is not clear how much administration knows about this. This is all before the lack of swim knowledge and recruiting he does, which can speak for itself when you look at results.

I think it just goes to show that after this year at Big East Champs, it should be his last as HC. Consistent decline in points scored over the last 3-4 years. Not many individual or relay champions… Childish behavior and definite anger issues… leaves practices early or doesn’t show and tells us it’s an emergency with his kid. Idk what kind of upper management would allow a highly paid coach to just come and go as he pleases. The point of you being paid is to coach and impart knowledge, but tbh I don’t want his knowledge… Team holds themselves together. Good team culture despite.

The coach has a good understanding of the sport, but he also seems to struggle with anger management issues. There are concerns about his attendance, as it's unclear how many days he's actually missing due to childcare responsibilities that should have been addressed outside of work hours. Only the people on deck really know when he isn't there, as I doubt higher-ups would know what happens on the pool deck since no athlete complains. As he is compensated by Seton Hall to fulfill his coaching duties, it would be beneficial if he could fully commit to his role or otherwise hand off the head coach position to the assistant. Team culture is good.

Does not take responsibility for mistakes and acts like a child towards his swimmers. Very repetitive in practice sets. Does not encourage his swimmers and holds grudges against a select swimmers and picks them out repetitively to yell at them.

Holds a grudge against his athletes and singles them out for weeks at a time.

Derek has been the head coach for a while, and it is clear he cannot handle the job. Derek consistantely treats his swimmers with disrespect and doesnt know how to properly output his emotions. He is extremely embarassing and immature when it comes to what makes him upset. He will blow up on the smallest thing and always hold a grudge. if you upset him, good luck getting him to like you ever again. He is an embarassing excuse of a coach.

I change my answer. He is the worst coach. Treats his swimmer very poorly and doesn’t know how to control his emotions and ends up taking them out on his swimmers. I have had anxiety going to practice for the past month and will until I’m done swimming. Do not come here and definitely do not contact Derek to come to seton hall.

Derek has no idea what he’s doing. Says one thing, completely does another. Practices are all the same. Had a great first year with him as HC but every year after was stagnant or declining. Had to practice during open swim hours as I never got enough during normal practices. If I had to do 8x75s again I was going to scream. Gave only his best swimmers, or the ones that complained enough, whatever they wanted. The rest were alway left in limbo. His assistant coaches know more than he does, but kept them sidelined or “doing tasks” while he coached because he wanted the spotlight. He road off the previous HCs coat tails and has declined the program since. Shameful

I believe that Coach Sapp has his flaws just like every other division 1 swim coach. Sure at times, he may not be a good communicator even though he stresses it. And sure he can have trouble from time to time accepting that he is in the wrong. But are there really coaches or people with 0 flaws? Derek's flaws are minuscule and if you take the easy effort to acclimate yourself to how he works, then you will succeed and enjoy your time at Seton Hall. Derek is an amazing coach who knows how to make swimmers better. His practices are hard and always gets the job done at the end of the year. He is insanely caring about your academic life and can sometimes seem like he is hounding you. But in reality, he just wants what's best for you as a swimmer and as a young adult. You must respect and trust a coach for them to respect and trust you. And if you can respect and trust Derek, then the same will be given to you. Derek is one of the most influential and important coaches I have had in my career. Overall, Derek is a very caring coach with every right intention for you as a swimmer and as a young adult. you don't win back 2 back big east titles by not knowing anything about swimming or not caring about your athletes.