Transfers Alvin Jiang and Cameron Auchinachie Unexpected Stars in Texas Dynasty
For more than four decades, the Texas men’s swimming program has been one of the elite teams in the nation. Under coach Eddie Reese, the Longhorns have won 15 national titles, and Texas swimmers have featured heavily on every U.S. Olympic team since the 1980s. Since 2015, Texas has won the NCAA team championship every year except one (in 2019, when the team finished second), and during that streak, stars such as Joseph Schooling, Will Licon, Clark Smith, Jack Conger and Townley Haas have been the centerpieces of the championship rosters.
Today’s Texas team has its stars, like Drew Kibler, who went on to qualify for the U.S. Olympic team in the 800 freestyle relay, and Carson Foster, who narrowly missed qualifying for Tokyo before swimming 2021’s fastest time in the 400-meter IM. But last year, Texas won a championship with wins in diving and two relays but no individual swimming events.
In 2022, the Longhorns are favored to add another crown — not solely because of swimmers like Kibler and Foster but because of the development of talented competitors up and down the roster, even unheralded swimmers who have become key contributors under the tutelage of Reese and associate head coach Wyatt Collins. That includes a pair of fifth-year students who have transferred from other schools, Alvin Jiang and Cameron Auchinachie.
Jiang transferred from the University of North Carolina prior to the 2019-20 season, and he was able to swim a third full season with the Longhorns because of an NCAA waiver following the COVID-19 pandemic. Auchinachie, meanwhile, swam at the University of Denver for three seasons, and he competed in relays at the NCAA Championships in 2018 and individually in 2019, but after sitting out the 2020-21 campaign, he chose to come to Austin for his final season of eligibility.
Both arrived in Austin unsure if they had what it took to make it with an elite team like Texas. The idea of training with Olympians and under one of the sport’s all-time greatest coaches was, understandably, intimidating. But Jiang and Auchinachie each felt welcomed right away.
“You know you have to earn respect and your spot on the team,” Jiang said. “So for me that first year, all I was concerned about was trying to find my place on the team, doing the best I can every day to be the best I can be. The guys, they’re just great, friendly guys. It really doesn’t matter how fast you are. I came in, and they all brought me in with open arms.”
Auchinachie was concerned about the training he would undertake after a year away from college swimming, but he, too, felt comfortable right away.
“I honestly thought I was going to get my butt kicked and have a lot of guys lose that faith in me going the times that I could,” Auchinachie said. “But right when I showed up, everyone was like, ‘We’re so excited for you. Don’t worry about practice. Eddie will ease us into it. You’re not going to look bad if you get a little broken down. Everyone gets broken down.’”
Jiang: Key Role in 2021 Championship Run
Jiang swam for the Tar Heels for two seasons, and during that time, he qualified for an individual final at the ACC Championships just once. He would often swim fast times in season, but he remembers getting to conference championship meets and barely dropping any time.
“When I was at UNC, I struggled with taper meets. Looking back on it, I just didn’t work hard enough during the year. I was lights-out in dual meets,” Jiang said. “I get to ACCs, shave, taper, throw a suit on, drop only like three tenths. That was probably, that moment, not having the end that I wanted at ACCs those two years, that’s what prompted me to leave and switch schools.”
Having grown up in Colleyville, Texas, Jiang was familiar with the Texas program, but looking back on the college recruiting process, “I think I just sold myself short,” he said. “I didn’t reach for those top programs where I maybe could have gone, and Texas, obviously, me being in state and having swum in Austin, it was one of those obvious choices, now that I look back on it, but it took those two years in North Carolina to really resurface that desire to see how far I could take myself in this sport. After those two years, I came to that realization, and Texas was the obvious choice.”
Jiang improved during his first season at Texas, but the NCAA Championships that year were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in 2021, he played a critical role for the Longhorns. He helped Texas win the 400 medley relay by delivering a 44.05 butterfly split, the second-fastest in the field, and he also provided crucial splits on the 200 freestyle and 200 medley relays. Individually, Jiang finished fourth in the 100 fly and 100 back (on the same evening of racing), and he was a consolation finalist in the 200 fly.
The meet came down to the wire, with the Longhorns defeating rival Cal by just 27 points, and in his individual events alone, Jiang scored 31.
“It was especially satisfying because it was in Greensboro, where we had ACC Champs when I was at North Carolina,” Jiang said. “To come full-circle and go back to Greensboro and just redeem myself in that way, that was particularly sweet to me.”
Auchinachie: Immediate Impact This Season
When Auchinachie was going through the recruiting process, he was attracted to Denver based on how sprinter Sid Farber had improved during his years with the program to become the best mid-major sprinter in the country, and he knew that then-Pioneers coach Brian Schrader had once worked for Reese at Texas as a graduate assistant. And during his time at Denver, Auchinachie did improve. In 2019, he finished as high as 11th at the NCAA Championships in the 100 free.
Later on, when he decided he wanted to swim a fifth year, Schrader helped convince Auchinachie “that Eddie would take me under and make me the swimmer I’d always wanted to be.” At Olympic Trials in June 2021, Auchinachie met the other Texas swimmers, and that sealed the deal that he would swim his final year for the Longhorns.
“They were all super excited for me,” he said. “I was like, ‘You guys know I’m looking at other schools, right?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, but you’re going to go here because we know that you’ll be so good.’”
Cameron Auchinachie — Photo Courtesy: Stephen Spillman/University of Texas Athletics
But no one could have expected that Auchinachie would come in and instantly become one of the best sprinters in the country. At the Minnesota Invitational in early December, the Binghamton, N.Y., native won the 50 freestyle and 100 backstroke, and in the 50 free, he swam an 18.80 that made him the only swimmer to go under 19 prior to conference championship season. Auchinachie’s 100 back time was 45.01, which ranked him No. 2 in the country prior to conference meets, and he entrenched himself as a key swimmer on all four Texas sprint relays, including the backstroke leg on the medleys.
He has made the leap, propelled by the training he put in since arriving at Texas and the meaning of being part of a team pushing for greatness.
“I think everything about practicing here is done with a lot more intent than I’ve ever. I’ve corrected a lot of the things that I thought I never could because everyone around you is influencing you to work on the little things but also putting your best effort every practice, which isn’t really normal,” Auchinachie said.
“I’m swimming for something bigger than just this one race. I’m trying to win for the history of this program. Honestly, it’s just really fun doing it with these guys. This is a hard sport to really enjoy. It’s hard to enjoy the highs and lows, but the lows are even enjoyable because you know that everyone else is there with you.”
Fifth-Year Transfer Stars
In this unexpected chapter at Texas, Jiang and Auchinachie have been able to work with Reese in the twilight of his career. The coach had announced his retirement after the 2021 NCAA Championships, but he changed his mind following Olympic Trials and returned as Texas’ head coach. For both transfer swimmers, getting to experience Reese in action has been incredibly satisfying.
Reese has always spoken not about winning but about making his swimmers better, and his swimmers see that in the way he acts toward them, from his on-deck coaching to pulling Jiang and Auchinachie aside after a Monday morning practice to show them photos from his weekend hunting trip.
“I’d say he’s got some magic to him,” Jiang said. “ Honestly, it’s very simple things. He talks to us. He talks to every swimmer, corrects their stroke and what not, but he’s also very concerned about how we are doing as a whole. Are we taking care of ourselves? Are we sleeping? Are we eating? How’s school going? Just that very basic, human kind of relationship, and I think that’s where it all starts. From there, you build trust in him, and he gets to know you, sees what you want to be, and that’s how you build that trust.”
Auchinachie added, “He surprised me because at his age, I wasn’t expecting him to be so engaged with every single swimmer because he has so many, but he is so on top of everything he does, and he just really cares for everyone. He cares about the history, and that’s really rare in sport, to have this tradition, and he kind of created it. There’s like an aura around him.”
This week, Reese’s Longhorns will be competing at the Big-12 Championships, a meet that Texas has won every single year since its debut in 1997. In fact, Texas has won its conference championship in 42 out of 43 previous seasons under Reese, all except his debut season in 1978-79. That conference meet will be a dress rehearsal for the NCAA Championships, scheduled for March 23-26 in Atlanta, where Texas will be favored to bring home a 16th trophy.
“We’re getting really excited,” Auchinachie said. “Alvin is probably going to be a little more rested than he was for midseason. I got a bit more rest at midseason, so I had a lot of fun having those fast swims.”
Both swimmers admitted they are slightly unsure of what their swimming future holds after NCAAs. Jiang will finish his undergraduate degree this year, and he is hoping to attend medical school in the future, while Auchinachie is completing a certificate program in strategic communications after getting his undergrad in construction management, which he expects to be the focus of his post-swimming career. Neither is ruling out competing beyond March, but they don’t know for sure.
“I do want to be a doctor and the best doctor I can be,” Jiang said. “Whether that’s this year or next year, I don’t know. Just focusing on what I have to do now and then dealing with that when that time comes.”
Right now, both swimmers are in the heart of a national championship push. Neither were junior-level stars long ordained to be leading the great Texas Longhorns swimming program, but here they are, swimming alongside and in fact pacing the cream of the crop in college swimming, aiming to add to a sterling legacy.