Longtime Alabama assistant coach James Barber is leaving the combined swim program in Tuscaloosa, marking the second assistant the Crimson Tide have lost in the past two weeks.
On April 17, Alabama senior associate coach Ozzy Quevedo was announced as the next head coach of the SMU women’s team.
Barber came to the Crimson Tide way back in 2007 after three years as an assistant at Florida State. After a decade on Alabama’s staff as an assistant, he was promoted to associate head coach in 2017.
“I am leaving to pursue new opportunities,” Barber told SwimSwam on Saturday. “I will be back.”
Since 2005, Barber has mentored 10 athletes who have competed at major international meets — five Americans and five international swimmers. He also gained experience coaching Olympians during the 1990s with the U.S. Resident National Team in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Jonty Skinner was among his fellow coaches and Amy Van Dyken among his pupils. In 1996, Van Dyken became the first American woman to win four gold medals in a single Olympiad.
A native of Prattville, Alabama, Barber got his start coaching at the age group level for the Montgomery YMCA before earning a head coaching gig at Club Makos in Gulf Breeze, Florida. That proved to be his springboard to breaking into the college ranks with FSU in 2004.
The last two seasons under new head coach Margo Geer have been up and down. In 2022, the Crimson Tide achieved their highest finish ever at the NCAA Championships when the women placed 4th, but they fell to just 14th this year. Along the way, fifth year Morgan Scott departed the program midseason, telling SwimSwam that she “couldn’t trust some of the coaches” with her health. Meanwhile, the Alabama men had their streak of top-15 NCAA finishes snapped at eight seasons in a row with a 19th-place showing this year.
In 2021, after Coley Stickels resigned but before Geer took over, Barber and Quevedo guided the Crimson Tide women to their first NCAA relay title in program history.
