Don Easterling, who coached NC State to ACC swimming dominance, dies at age 90
Don Easterling once promised his N.C. State swimmers and divers that he would let them cut off his hair and pierce an ear if they won the ACC championship.
That was in 1992. The Wolfpack won. The locks of hair fell and the earring went in, leaving the coach to beg for a baseball cap to wear.
“I asked them to be considerate,” a happy Easterling said at the time. “I’m ugly enough as it is.”
Easterling, who died Saturday at age 90, coached the Wolfpack from 1970 to 1994 and once won ACC titles with the ease of a shaved swimmer gliding through the water.
He could be gruff and demanding, and often was. He also could tell a homespun tale with the best of them, never at a loss for words or humor. Or promises to his team.
More than anything, his teams won — 15 men’s titles in all and two women’s championships.
The Wolfpack was so dominating that it claimed 12 straight men’s titles from 1971 to ‘82. Easterling would coach 40 All-Americans and seven Olympians, five who won Olympic medals.
“You win close races with character,” Easterling said in a 1992 interview with the News & Observer. “It’s what’s inside a kid that counts. It’s not his arms and legs but his heart.”
Easterling, named to the N.C. State Athletic Hall of Fame in 2016, was a passionate coach. At times, he would hop into the pool to congratulate a swimmer.
After the 1992 ACC title, won in Chapel Hill, the Wolfpack swimmers threw their coach into the pool. Easterling later quipped he drove back to Raleigh in wet clothes and had the “sneezes to prove it.”
Easterling’s winning tenure at N.C. State wasn’t without questions about his fiery nature or coaching style.
In September 1987, one of Easterling’s swimmers, Onno Schild, collapsed during a six-mile team training run and later died. Two years later, Easterling signed an employment agreement with the university prohibiting him from using “degrading, harassing, threatening or sexually explicit language” around his team or other students.
Of Schild’s death, Easterling said in 1992: “That was tragic and I feel for his family. I guess it made me work that much harder to prove I’m a good coach and run a good program.”
The Wolfpack was fifth in the ACC in 1986 and 1987 as North Carolina, Virginia and Clemson challenged the N.C. State reign. But Easterling led the Pack to a second-place finish in 1991 and then the championship in 1992, his last with N.C. State.
“After all we’ve been through, to be as far down as we were, yes, that makes this the sweetest of the championships to me,” Easterling said in ‘92.
Wolfpack swim coach Braden Holloway, whose teams have won seven men’s titles and two women’s titles since 2015, called Easterling a friend and coaching mentor who continued to be a big supporter of the program.
“There are so many stories that someone could say about him and they still wouldn’t do him justice,” Holloway said in a statement. “He was a pioneer of the sport, wore his heart on his sleeve and influenced so many at N.C. State. The stories about him still echo today.”
(Staff writer Chip Alexander, the NC State beat writer in 1992, conducted the interview with Easterling.)
