“Rome wasn’t built in a day”, but Cal State Bakersfield’s rise to a national swimming powerhouse happened almost overnight. When Ernie Maglischo arrived in 1983 as the founding head coach of the Roadrunner men's swimming program, he had to build the team, establish its standards, and convince swimmers that Bakersfield could become a destination for championship athletes. 

He did not need long to provide evidence. In its first season, CSUB finished second nationally. The next season, the `Runners won the first of eight consecutive NCAA Division II national championships, beginning the greatest championship run in the history of NCAA Division II swimming.

“We didn’t win [that first season], but it was probably one of the best years I’ve ever had as a coach, to take a group of people that were in their first year as a college team and be able to be second nationally,” Maglischo said.

On Sept. 26, 2026, Maglischo will be inducted into the CSUB Athletics Hall of Fame as part of its second-ever class. The honor recognizes the titles and the foundation beneath them: a culture in which improvement became a daily obligation and belief became something a team could build together.

Derek Robinson, who swam for Maglischo from 1987 to 1991, remembers that culture as something his coach required until it became self-sustaining.

“Ernie demanded that you showed up to practice and you worked hard, and he built that culture in the team to the point that a lot of times he didn’t have to say anything,” Robinson said.

The expectations were direct. Maglischo never softened the goal or disguised what it would take to reach it.

“There was nothing less than winning the national title,” Robinson said.

Maglischo studied the person inside each student-athlete, then found adjustments to help them move forward. His coaching ideology was rooted in technique and the physiology involved in every practice.

“My coaching philosophy has always been the same and that is to try to know about the sport as much as you can in terms of stroke mechanics and the physiology of training,” Maglischo said.

Greg Golling, a `Runner swimmer from 1987 to 1991, experienced that approach firsthand. Maglischo recruited him as a “diamond in the rough,” seeing potential that was not yet visible in the stopwatch. Once Golling arrived, Maglischo continued looking for ways to turn that potential into performance.

“He was always as a tactician; he’s looking at people’s strokes. Here’s something that doesn’t look right, let’s videotape that,” Golling said. “He was doing video analysis before people were really doing that. It was very scientifically driven on his part.”

Maglischo’s methods were analytical, but his teams were not built by data alone. Their championship identity came from the choices the `Runners made when nobody needed to remind them what was expected. One of those choices began before sunrise.

“I told the swimmers to try and get up about an hour earlier every day, so that over a period of about a week they were…getting up at 4 a.m.,” Maglischo said. “What I didn’t know is they turned that into a team breakfast, and it actually just became a ritual for the team. That was a good indication of where their mind was…They wanted to win.”

The ritual captured the relationship between discipline and belonging. The `Runners were willing to do difficult things because the work connected them to one another and to a goal larger than any individual race. At the national championships, Robinson saw that belief become visible in the pool.

“I can remember my first nationals. The first event was the 500 free and the first guy goes and he swims out of his mind and that just became the thing,” Robinson said. “As one guy succeeded, the next guy topped it and topped it, and it was kind of a competition within the team to see who could come up with the biggest ‘Oh my God’ swim of the meet.”

The results turned CSUB into a program that opponents noticed before the first race even began. Robinson remembers walking onto the pool deck in the CSUB Blue & Gold and feeling the attention shift toward the team.

“When you walked on the pool deck as a Cal State Bakersfield Roadrunner…everything stopped. Everyone who was there stopped and looked and paid attention to us as we walked in, as we got in, as we warmed up,” Robinson said. “They wanted to see everything we were doing.”

For Golling, that transformation still stands out because of where it began. Bakersfield was not always an easy place to recruit, but Maglischo persuaded elite swimmers to come, then gave them reasons to stay. He built a championship program from scratch and made it matter to the people inside it.

“I think just what a champion he was. We won nine, ten championships under him. He set this school up as a powerhouse in swimming, from ground zero,” Golling said.

The official record tells the story with its own force. Maglischo led CSUB to eight straight NCAA Division II national championships, produced numerous All-Americans and established a program that remains one of the most dominant in Division II history. But his influence did not end when he left Bakersfield in 1993.

Over a coaching career spanning more than three decades, Maglischo became the only coach to win NCAA team titles at three different universities: Chico State, Oakland University, and Cal State Bakersfield. His teams won 19 conference championships, and he mentored Olympians, NCAA Champions, and Olympic Trials qualifiers.

He also became one of swimming’s most respected teachers. Maglischo authored seven influential books, including the Swimming Faster series and A Primer for Swimming Coaches. He served on the NCAA Swimming Rules Committee and the USA Swimming Sports Medicine Council, consulted for the U.S. Olympic Swim Team in 1984, 1988, and 1992, and coached the Ecuadorian Olympic Swim Team in 1996.

His curiosity never left the pool. Golling recalled one day when Maglischo explained a new idea about technique he had just discovered.

“He called me up in September, just kind of out of the blue. And we’re talking and he just… ‘I think I figured out how propulsion works in swimming,’” Golling said. “He’s still working on it, and he’s explaining it to me. I was like, Ernie, you’re a genius.”

That lifelong pursuit of understanding is part of what made Maglischo’s coaching so powerful. He was never satisfied with a surface-level answer, whether the question involved a swimmer’s stroke, a team’s habits, or the way the body moves through the water. He kept learning, then gave what he learned to the sport.

For the student-athletes who came through CSUB, the lessons extended beyond competition. Robinson credits the program’s intense requirements with shaping the rest of his life.

“The discipline and the work ethic that I derived from here and everything comes back to Cal State Bakersfield,” Robinson said. “If I hadn’t told Ernie I was coming and walked on here, I don’t think I would’ve been as successful in life as I have been.”

Golling offers a similar measure of gratitude. He remembers the coach who believed in him before he was one of the fastest swimmers in the room, and the opportunity that followed that belief.

“Thank you for believing in me and taking the chance and recruiting me to come here, because it absolutely changed my life,” Golling said. “Thank you.”

In 2025, Maglischo was selected for induction into the American Swimming Coaches Association Hall of Fame, adding one of the sport’s highest honors to a career that already included national titles, Olympic teams and generations of swimmers influenced by his work. His CSUB Hall of Fame induction now brings that story back to the place where its most visible chapter began.

Maglischo looks back on his Bakersfield years with pride, but he also remembers the people who made the achievement possible.

“We accomplished things that most people don’t get to accomplish. We had some great things to be proud of, and at the same time, we had a very supportive community around us that made it quite enjoyable to do that,” Maglischo said. “I left being a very strong supporter of Bakersfield and just singing their praises to everybody.”

When he considers what he hopes his swimmers remember, Maglischo does not point first to a title or a time. He points to possibility.

At Cal State Bakersfield, Ernie Maglischo gave that idea a starting block, a training plan, and a team willing to believe. The championships followed. So did the books, the Olympic teams, the coaching honors, and the athletes who carried his lessons into the rest of their lives.

~GoRunners.com~