Andy Johns returns for his 16th season as the Northern Arizona head swimming and diving coach.  Throughout his NAU career, Johns has continued to take on new challenges and strives to take his program to the next level. 

Johns led his Lumberjack squad to a third place finish at the WAC Championships in 2010-11, with  the Lumberjacks collecting 21 All-WAC awards during the four-day championship meet.  NAU broke six school records and produced 41 top 16 individual finishes and five point-scoring relays.  Sophomore Fi Connell repeated as the 200 backstroke champion, won silver in the 100 backstroke, and bronze in the 200 individual medley. 

Connell built off her sensational freshman season in which she won gold medals in both the 100 and 200 backstroke.  She became the first multiple winner for NAU at a championship meet since Emily Simon in 2004 and hit NCAA qualifying times in both events.  Connell was named to the 2010 and 2011 Division I Mid-Major All-America team by www.collegeswimming.com. She was joined on the 2011 squad by Emma Lowther after the freshman took home a silver medal at the WAC meet. 

Johns led NAU to a pair of second place finishes at the WAC Championships prior to a fifth place finish in 2010.  The Lumberjacks earned the runner-up title among nine teams in 2008-09 and finished second among eight teams during the 2007-08 season. 

At the 2009 WAC Championships, the Lumberjacks earned 43 All-WAC Awards and set 11 school records, marking the most records set at the WAC meet in the five years NAU has been a member as well as the most records ever set at a conference meet in Johns’ 14 years. The 43 All-WAC Awards are also the most to date, and were four more than NAU had earned the previous year.

Johns coached an individual gold medalist as then-junior Rachael Foe earned the honor in the 200 individual medley. Two of NAU’s relay teams also earned silver medals along with school records.

Along with its second-place team finish in 2007-08, NAU earned 39 All-WAC Awards, set six school records and earned two special awards. Diving Coach Nikki Huffman received co-WAC Diving Coach of the Year and senior Natalie Hughes was named the WAC Diver of the Year.

Six years ago Johns helped NAU finish third among the eight teams in the WAC and set seven school records at the conference meet. Alexis Buckley earned an individual WAC title for the second year in the row, winning the 400 individual medley in a school-record time. 

In 2005-06, the Lumberjacks placed third at the WAC meet for the first time, and also set three school records. Johns coached Buckley, a distance freestyle swimmer, to a qualifying time for the NCAA Championships. Buckley swam in both the 1,650 and 500 freestyle at the NCAA Championships in Athens, Ga., and was the first female swimmer at NAU to represent the Lumberjacks in 12 years.

The 2004-05 season marked NAU’s first as an affiliate member of the WAC. Johns not only led the team to a fifth-place finish at the conference championships among a field that included nationally-ranked SMU and Hawai’i, but was named the WAC Coach of the Year in NAU’s rookie season. The team placed 12 swimmers and divers on the WAC All-Academic Team, and set a total of nine school records at the championships.

In 2003-04, the year before joining the WAC, NAU finished second at the National Independent Conference (NIC) Championships and Johns was named the NIC Women’s Swimming Coach of the Year. NAU had seven individual conference champions, tying the team record for the most champions in a single conference meet. The Lumberjacks also set 10 school records, and earned two other honors in addition to Johns’, as assistant coach Nikki Huffman earned her fourth Diving Coach of the Year honor and then-sophomore Blair Buder was named the Female Diver of the Year.

Over the years, Johns has put NAU swimming and diving on the map on several levels, including the regional stage as well as producing perennial conference-title contenders when he moved the program from the Pacific Collegiate Swimming Conference into the all-Division I NIC in 1998-99.

In 11 years against exclusively Division I competition at the conference level, Johns has led NAU to six second-place finishes (including three straight from 2001-04) and three third-place efforts. Success for NAU not only shows in the team standings, but also in the record book. In Johns' 14 years, NAU has earned 42 individual and relay conference titles, 87 school records (a high of 11 set at the 2009 WAC meet), nine conference records and 16 NCAA qualifying marks.

In 2001, NAU earned its first individual NIC champions (Chelsey Urban and Kate Morgan) and finished a strong third in the conference meet. Johns then raised the bar even higher and led NAU to a second-place NIC finish in 2002, just a few points shy of the program's first Division I conference title.

Johns has always been a proponent of the "total" program - one that also succeeds in the classroom. Since the fall of 1996, his student-athletes have posted cumulative grade-point averages of 3.00 and higher in 30 of 32 academic semesters. The 2008-09 team earned the 39th-highest GPA among all Division I teams for the fall of 2008, recording a 3.28.

The Lumberjacks have consistently had the most student-athletes earn Academic All-WAC honors among the schools in the league, with 16 earning the honor last year. The 2007-08 squad earned a record 28 NAU Golden Eagle Scholar Athlete Awards. NAU has been recognized five times as an Academic All-America Team by the Collegiate Swim Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) including last year's squad which posted a 3.24 grade point average in the fall. In 14 years, Johns' charges have earned 237 Golden Eagle Awards.

Johns came to NAU in 1996 from Clemson, where he trained the sprinters, including one NCAA All-American. Prior to that, he spent three years as head coach at Northeast Missouri State (now Truman State). During his tenure, his teams set 45 school records and five athletes posted their first national qualifying times.

Johns is well-respected in the swimming research community, having presented at the American College of Sports Medicine national meeting twice, first about the effects of warm-up in 1991 and tapering in 1992. Johns is published in many sports medicine journals, including the International Journal of Sports Medicine and Medicine and Science in Sport in Exercise. He was awarded a research fellowship from the Institute of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina in 1990.

As a collegian at East Carolina, Johns helped his team to the Colonial Athletic Association title in 1989. Prior to ECU, he was a junior-college All-American, earning the honor eight times in two years at Broward (Fla.) Community College.

Outside of his time as a coach, Johns has performed with the Flagstaff Light Opera Company over the past four years, including the musicals Oliver and The Secret Garden, and is currently a member of The Flagstaff Master Chorale.

Johns received his bachelor's degree in physical education from ECU in 1989 and followed that with a master's in exercise physiology in 1991. Johns has one daughter, Ali.i.

Nikki Huffman begins her 16th year at the helm of the Northern Arizona diving program, a squad that she has consistently led to the NCAA Zone Diving Championships. A four-time National Independent Conference (NIC) Diving Coach of the Year, Huffman now takes her team into its eighth year of Western Athletic Conference (WAC) competition, a league which boasts some of the top divers in the country.

The NAU diving program reached new heights last season, as the Lumberjacks  sent six divers to the NCAA Zone Regional Championships, the most in school history.  Senior Lana Christensen was the top finisher posting an 11th-place finish on 3-meter. NAU combined to take home five All-WAC selections, while senior Taryn Harris named WAC Diver of the Week twice and Christensen was named to the CoSIDA Academic All-America At Large Team.

In 2009-10, the diving team picked up nine All-WAC honors including medals from Harris and freshman Kristy Ardavanis.  Ardavanis won bronze on 3-meter springboard and Harris won silver on 1-meter.  Huffman qualified four divers for the NCAA Zone Diving Regional Championships.  Harris went on to place 12th on the 1-meter at the Zone meet.

In 2008-09, Harris earned bronze medals at the WAC Championships on both 1-meter and 3-meter. Harris went on to earn eighth place at the NCAA Zone Diving Championships on the 1-meter, joining two other Lumberjacks at that meet.

Huffman and her divers had a breakout year in 2007-08, as senior Natalie Hughes became NAU’s first-ever gold-medal winner in diving in the WAC (3-meter) and was named the WAC Diver of the Year. Huffman herself earned her first WAC Diving Coach of the Year Award, sharing the honor with Mike Brown of Hawaii.

In the eight years prior to joining the WAC, the Lumberjacks dominated conference competition in the NIC.  Huffman has brought the Lumberjacks to an elite status at the NCAA Zone Diving Championships, represented by schools from the Pacific-10, WAC, Big West and Mountain West conferences. NAU won 11 individual conference diving titles in eight years in the NIC women's competition under Huffman's guidance, and earned four conference diver-of-the-year awards (including back-to-back honors by Kate Morgan in 2002 and 2003, and the most recent by Blair Buder in 2004). Huffman was named the Women's Diving Coach of the Year four times (1997, 2002, 2003, 2004).

A year prior to Harris’ impressive eighth-place finish at the Zone meet, Hughes, who represented NAU all four years of her career, finished seventh on both 1-meter and 3-meter. Danielle Borth was a three-time representative, and placed 10th on the 1-meter and 12th on the platform as a senior. Both divers finished in the top-8 on all three events at the WAC Championships their junior and senior years, with Hughes earning the bronze medal on the 1-meter as a junior and the gold as a senior, and Borth taking bronze on 1-meter and 3-meter as a senior.

Not only has NAU been dominant on the conference level, but it is starting to gain a name for itself on a national level. Over the last eight years, Lumberjacks have taken 28 spots at the NCAA Zone E Diving Championships, which is the fourth-most among all schools represented at the meet over that span (trailing only UCLA, Stanford and Arizona) - ahead of most Pac-10 and all Mountain West, WAC and Big West schools. The senior class of 2003 for Huffman was the most successful, as all three - Kate Morgan, Maryann Wagener and Courtney McKenzie - participated in the zone meet in all four years they were at the Mountain Campus, led by Morgan as the top finisher every year and even being a second alternate to the NCAA Championships in 2003.

Over the last 12 years, Huffman has produced at least eight divers that qualified for the zone meet every year. All in all, 22 different divers have represented NAU at the zone diving meet on the women's side since Huffman arrived; that is nearly twice the number that represented the school in the previous 13 years of the program's existence.

While success on the boards has been prominent in describing Huffman, her charges have also been superior in the classroom. The divers have helped the Lumberjacks be named an Academic All-America Team by the Collegiate Swimming Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) four times - an honor given to a team with a grade-point average of 2.90 and higher. NAU had a GPA among the top-20 in all of Division I in 2003-04, with divers Anna Deem and Courtney McKenzie leading the way. Deem was named an honorable-mention Academic All-America by the CSCAA. McKenzie also earned the CSCAA honor but, in addition, was named the NAU Golden Eagle Female Scholar-Athlete of the Year in 2002-03. She also earned selection to the CoSIDA Academic All-America Women's At Large District VIII First Team, making her a nominee for Academic All-America consideration.

Danielle Borth was the first diver to be named Academic All-WAC every year of her career. Borth earned another first when The Leadership Consortium (TCL) in Phoenix named her one of their 2008 Community Leadership Award winners. Borth contributed 132 hours of community service as a senior, and was also named the female Lumberjack Service Award winner.

Prior to NAU, Huffman spent two years at Clemson, where she was voted the 1996 Atlantic Coast Conference Men's Diving Coach of the Year. With the Tigers, Huffman coached both men's and women's diving teams to winning seasons, with the women's team being ranked in the top-25 of the national coaches' poll in 1996. She had one ACC champion each year and took five divers to the zone meet in 1996.

Huffman began her coaching career at her alma mater, Oakland University. She coached six All-Americans and three Division II national champions, being named Division II National Men's Diving Coach of the Year in 1994. At Oakland, she coached Dario D'Fazio, who represented Venezuela in the 1992 and 1996 Summer Olympics.

As an athlete, Huffman was a seven-time All-America and two-time national champion during her career at Oakland, where she returned every time the NIC Championships were held at the Rochester, Mich., school.

A 1991 graduate of Oakland, the former Nikki Kelsey was married in the summer of 2001. She gave birth to a daughter, Kayla, in the summer of 2003, and to a son, Darren, in the spring of 2005.

Jeana Fuccillo enters her second season as the assistant swimming and diving coach after serving as a volunteer coach and team manager during the 2009-10 season.  Fuccillo has experience as a collegiate student-athlete and a familiarity with the NAU athletic department.

Fuccillo was a four-year letterwinner at UCLA helping the Bruins to a pair of second place finishes in the Pac-10 Conference during her career.  She was a three-time top-eight finisher at the Pac-10 Championships and served as team captain her senior season.  

As an upperclassman, Fuccillo worked as a recruiting coordinator and organized recruiting trips for potential student-athletes.  She also gained experience as a student-athlete academic mentor advising freshmen student-athletes.

Following her collegiate swimming career, Fuccillo worked as an academic graduate assistant in the NAU athletic department while pursing her graduate studies in the college of education.  As a graduate assistant, she helped the academic coordinators in eligibility and performance of student-athletes.

While in Flagstaff, Fuccillo gained coaching experience working with the Flagstaff Peaks Aquatic Club.  She remains active at the club level coaching 8-13 age group swimmers.

Prior to swimming at UCLA, Fuccillo was the Illinois High School Swimmer of the Year, a Junior National Champion, Olympic Trials qualifier (2000 and 2004), National Junior Team member and US National Finalist. 

Fuccillo, a native of St. Louis, Mo., was an Athletic Director’s Honor Roll selection at UCLA and earned her undergraduate degree in sociology in 2007.  She completed her master’s degree in educational psychology and human relations in December 2009.

Liz Hobbs begins her 12th year as an assistant coach for the Lumberjack swimming and diving program. She has been a familiar face around the program for several years, including serving as the "Voice of Wall Aquatic Center" performing public-address duties during swim meets.

Hobbs has a long pedigree in swimming, both as a competitor and a coach. As a swimmer, she is a 15-time U.S. Masters Swimming national champion and set a Masters world record for the 50-meter freestyle in 1988. She was a 10-time All-America performer over four years at Alabama (1979-83), also winning Southeastern Conference individual titles. She was a qualifier for the U.S. Olympic Trials in 1980, 1984 and 1988. She was a state sprint champion and record holder in both the 50 and 100 freestyles in Florida (1977-79) and Illinois (1976).

As a coach, she has served in several capacities at the club and collegiate levels. Since 1997, she has been the head coach of the Arizona Mountain Masters club team based in Flagstaff. She also had been a men's and women's assistant swim coach at Illinois Wesleyan (1987-92) and a women's assistant at Illinois State (1985-86). She has coached several club teams in Illinois, New Jersey and Pennsylvania before coming to Flagstaff.

Other opportunities within the sport have come in marketing and sales. Since 1995, Hobbs has been national marketing manager for Speedo Authentic Fitness, and has worked with Dolphin International (1994-95) as national sales manager and as assistant director of team sales and promotions for The Finals Swimwear (1992-94).

Hobbs earned her bachelor's degree in marketing/management from Illinois State. She is married to Dr. Brandon Cruickshank, an assistant professor of chemistry at NAU. The couple have two children, Baden and Camden.