Though he doesn't compete in the pool, senior manager Nick Schappler plays a vital role for the women's swimming and diving team.
Schappler performs a variety of duties, coordinating travel plans for the team and handling its equipment.
"It's a laundry list of things," Schappler said. "I do everything like equipment, ticketing, hotel logistics, transportation, recruiting [and] compliance. I do our team meals. I do the expense reporting for the business office whenever we purchase anything and pretty much anything that the coaches need."
The Bedford, N.H., native started out as one of 21 football managers, and through his excellent evaluations was given the job as swimming and diving manager in January.
Schappler said his favorite part of being manager is interacting with the team.
"I would say, first of all, the team dynamics and the relationships I build with the girls and getting to see their success and being a part of that success — that's probably my top enjoyment," Schappler said.
"Secondly, the travel, because I get to go to all these universities whenever we have away meets and it's really neat to get to see these colleges and travel to places I've never been before."
Schappler is currently in the planning stages of scheduling a 12-day trip to Hawaii for the team, where the Irish will train and then face the University of Hawaii on Jan. 4. Schappler said he is looking forward to the trip.
"We're just in the planning stages now," Schappler said. "We're going to fly out there. I haven't been there before because I was at the football game last year. We've got some things planned, like catered meals and transportation and things like that."
Schappler said the key to balancing his work for the team and his work for school is making full use of his time.
"It's definitely a challenge," Schappler said. "When I was working for football, there were times I was working 40 hours a week. Now I'm working about 30 hours a week with swimming. It's really just time management, being able to switch between tasks without losing efficiency."
Contact Scott Frano at sfrano@nd.edu
