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.

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

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

Coach Derek is the most unknowledgeable and unprofessional coach I have ever had. Not only does he lack is social awareness, particularly in interactions with women, but also severely lacks compassion, empathy, and good communication skills. He is unable to separate his personal matters from the pool and often takes frustration or stress out on swimmers. He expects exemplary communication but seldom reciprocates. Outside of his attitude and personality, he is an incompetent coach who never gives helpful or constructive insight into swims. He is unwilling to listen to swimmers needs or suggestions. When issues are brought up, He takes criticism personally and becomes defensive and closes off. He pretends to care however actions do not show. The team is amazing although the culture is entirely created by the team.

I would not recommend, to anyone searching for a school, this program and coach. Severe lack of ability.

He lacks necessary knowledge for the overall sport making it incredibly frustrating to swim for him. I swam for him when he was the assistant and he was good when he was being told what to do. Now being head coach it is apparent that this job is too much for him.

He is more of an unmotivator then anything else, doesn't know what he's doing at practice other then garbage yardage.

He lies to his swimmers, is not motivational at all, he does not have a coaching philosophy or if he does he fails to share it with his athletes.