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Season at Tennessee: 23rd Year
NCAA Champions: 6 (4 men, 2 women)
SEC Champions: 34 (20 men, 14 women)
SEC Coach of the Year: 11 times
1994 (M), 1996 (M), 1997 (W), 1998 (M), 1999 (M), 2000 (M), 2001 (M), 2003 (W), 2012 (M&W), 2013 (W).
2013 National Women's Diving Coach of the Year
Tennessee diving coach Dave Parrington, a successful athlete on both the collegiate and international levels, has translated that athletic excellence into a high degree of proficiency in the coaching ranks. Parrington has received countless honors on every level the diving community and recently completed his 23rd season coaching UT divers.
His wealth of experience and teaching ability was displayed in the successes of his athletes with divers excelling at the conference and national levels year in, year out.
The Harare, Zimbabwe, native owns an impressive resume. The SEC coaches have voted Parrington the Men's Diving Coach of the Year seven times (1994, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2012) and the Women's Coach of the Year four times (1997, 2003, 2012, 2013). Since arriving on The Hill, Parrington has produced six NCAA champions and 34 SEC champions. He has coached eight USA Diving national champions. Parrington and the UT divers have pieced together an impressive stretch over the last two seasons.
The 2011-12 season was among Tennessee's best overall seasons in the diving well as the men swept all three diving events at the SEC Championships for the first time in program history. Ryan Helms won the 1-meter and 3-meter titles and freshman Mauricio Robles took the platform. Tori Lamp led the women all year and won her first SEC title in her signature event, the platform. Helms and Lamp were both voted the SEC Diver of the Year for the men and women.
Lamp, Helms and former SEC champion Michael Wright competed in the 2012 USA Olympic Diving Trials. Lamp also qualified for the FINA Grand Prix diving series for Team USA during the summer months.
In 2012-13, Parrington was named the CSCAA National Women's Diving Coach of the Year and SEC Women's Diving Coach of the Year after leading the Lady Vols to championship-level heights at the SEC and NCAA championships. Lamp was named the National Diver of the Year after making the finals of all three diving events, placing second on the platform for the second time, and senior Jodie McGroarty made the finals in both springboard competitions to help Tennessee finish third in the team standings for the first time in program history.
Parrington coached Zimbabwe's Olympic team in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics as well as the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Other Olympic service includes two stints (1998, 2008) as a judge at the U.S. Olympic diving trials and a selector for the USA Olympic team selection camp hosted at the Allan Jones Intercollegiate Aquatic Center. He also served the United States' diving team as a coach for the 1997 World Cup qualifying and championships rounds and was rewarded with the USA Diving Coaches Award of Excellence.
As a student-athlete, Parrington competed in the 1980 Moscow Olympicsrepresenting Zimbabwe in both he three-meter and platform events. Parrington also played for Zimbabwe's national diving and water polo teams.
In August 2008, former UT head football coach Phillip Fulmer endowed $250,000 for the Dave Parrington Tennessee Diving Scholarship. The gift was a token of gratitude for Parrington's many years coaching Fulmer's daughter and former Lady Vol diver Brittany.
In the summer of 2009, Parrington married UT swimming and diving massage therapist Marie Wilson. She has been a part of the program for nine years and is a Knoxville, Tenn., native. She has three children Jeff, Brent and Derek and five grandchildren Emily, Zachary, Camille, Blake and Maggie.
