Peter Daland

Peter Daland (April 12, 1921 – October 20, 2014) was an International Swimming Hall of Fame U.S. Olympic and collegiate swim coach from the United States, best-known for coaching the University of Southern California Trojans swim team to nine NCAA championships from 1957-1992. Daland started Philadelphia's Suburban Swim Club around 1950, an outstanding youth program, which he coached through 1955, then served briefly as an Assistant Coach at Yale from 1955-56, where he was mentored by Olympic Coach and long serving Yale Head Coach Bob Kiphuth.

He was born in New York City to Elliot and Katherine Daland, but grew up in Philadelphia, where after college, he began a coaching career that spanned over 40 years. Peter's more traditional father was slow to approve his unorthodox choice of careers.

Daland attended Harvard University as did his father, and grandfather, before he enlisted in the United States Army for World War II. After the war, he graduated from Swarthmore College in 1948 and got his first coaching job at the Rose Valley Suburban League in Rose Valley, Pennsylvania, where he won 8 straight Suburban League titles (1947–55). Around 1950, he founded and was the first coach of the Suburban Swim Club, now called the Suburban Seahawks Club in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania and later served as an assistant coach to Bob Kiphuth at Yale University.

In 1956, he decided to take Horace Greeley's advice to head west and became coach at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Athletic Club. Recognizing the future of California swimming, and showing persistence, Daland endured rejection from fifty California clubs that turned down his application. Demonstrating his early success, in 1958, after two years on the USC coaching staff, he returned to Yale with 5 USC Freshmen and won the National AAU Team Title from the New Haven Swim Club.

For 35 years (1957–1992), Daland was the swimming coach for the USC Trojans, where he led the Trojans to 9 NCAA Championships. Harvard educated, and a graduate of Swarthmore, he was known for bringing the "bearing of an upper crust Eastern sophisticate" to the less stodgy USC campus, and would often come to the swim deck in a white shirt, coat and tie.

He led teams to 14 AAU Men's National titles, and 2 AAU Women's National titles. He is the only coach to have won all three major national team championships—8 NCAA, 14 National AAU Men's, and 2 National AAU Women's (Los Angeles Athletic Club). Specializing in family dynasties, Daland had the good fortune of obtaining championship wins from the brothers Bottom, Devine, Orr, and the House brother and sister act. His Trojan teams won more than 160 dual meets and won more than 100 individual titles. By 1974, Daland's record boasted 183 individual national champions.

Some of the most outstanding swimmers he mentored included four time gold medal winner John Naber and American record holders Dave Wharton and Mike O’Brien.

Daland also coached the U.S. women's swim team at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, where his swimmers won 15 of the 24 medals awarded in women's swim events. The women's team won six of eight events. He then coached the US men's team at the 1972 Olympics in Munich, where his men swimmers won 26 of 45 medals awarded in men's events. In those Olympics, Mark Spitz of the United States had a spectacular run, lining up for seven events, winning seven Olympic titles and setting seven world records.