The Scoop
Pitt's Jamie Dixon, W&J's Kaitlyn Orstein

Local Swimmer Ends Career in Style

For the past four years, Kaitlyn Ornstein has been re-writing the Division III record book at Washington and Jefferson, the Presidents Athletic Conference and the across Division III.

Last month, Ornstein competed in her final Division III Swimming & Diving National Championships held at Miami of Ohio. She put on an incredible, but quite believable, performance. Ornstein won three national titles and shattered the 200 IM National records.

Ornstein, who was featured in Sports Illustrated earlier this year, set the D-III record in winning the 200 IM in 2:00.27; she set a Miami of Ohio record and a W&J record with her national title in the 100 breaststroke (1:02.04) and set the W&J record in the 200 breast with a time of 2:16.29.

For her career, Ornsetin won eight D-III titles, broke 10 PAC records and 18 W&J records. She was the PAC Swimmer of the Year every year of her career and was a 14-time All-American.

Coaching Carrousel

It's that time of year again. The time when Pitt fans get into a panic because basketball coach Jamie Dixon's name starts getting mentioned with other job openings in the coaching ranks. In the past, it's been Texas Christian, Arizona State, Missouri and Southern California. This year it's Indiana, LSU, South Carolina, USC (again) and Arizona.

The particularly intriguing one figures to be Indiana.

The gargantuan ten-person search committee at IU will decide, first of all, whether or not to retain interim coach Dan Dakich, who took over when Kelvin Sampson-ahem-"resigned." If they decide to replace Dakich, the ten-member committee will set about trying to hire their fourth coach this decade..

The names that have been publicly mentioned are, among others, Washington State's Tony Bennett, Memphis' John Calipari, Marquette's Tom Crean, ESPN's Bobby Knight, Xavier's Sean Miller, Louisville's Rick Pitino - and, of course, Pitt's Dixon.

Without getting ahead of ourselves here, should Indiana call, Dixon owes it to himself to at least listen.

Pitt AD Steve Pederson, when all this is said and done, may have to pay Dixon to keep him. We think Dixon has earned a bit of a bump after what we consider to be his best season yet. Pederson can make a statement and bump to Dixon to the million-dollar-a-year mark, with an increased buyout that would all but lock him in for the foreseeable future. It would be a power move, and Pederson-even the kinder, gentler version that seems to be in place these days-is all about power moves.

Nothing has happened yet other than Dixon's name being tossed around, so who knows if it will go any further than that? But if we're Indiana, we press 4-1-2 and make that phone call.