Laura McGlaughlin enters her fifth season at Villanova in 2024-25. She was elevated to Associate Head Coach ahead of her third season on the Villanova swimming and diving coaching staff in the 2022-23 campaign after serving as assistant coach for two years. She returned to her alma mater in 2020-21 following stints at Georgetown and Penn. She previously spent two seasons on head coach Rick Simpson's staff after graduating in 2013.
Since coming back to the Main Line, McGlaughlin has helped coach the 'Cats to four consecutive BIG EAST titles on the women's side with the men finishes as high as second at the conference meet in 2021. Villanova has had the Women's Most Outstanding Swimmer of the Meet each season. She and the rest of the staff have been named BIG EAST Coaching Staff of the Year for the women in each year, as well.
In her two seasons as an assistant, McGlaughlin has helped coach the women's team to back-to-back BIG EAST titles and the men to a pair of top-three finishes at the conference championships. She aided
Kelly Montesi to a NCAA Division I Championship appearance at the end of the 2021-22 campaign, the first Wildcat to make it to the national stage since 2013.
McGlaughlin spent two seasons as an assistant coach at Penn from 2018 to 2020, where she worked with swimmers who combined to break 15 school records. She worked with Catherine Buroker, who was a two-time Ivy League champion and became only the second Quakers women’s swimmer to qualify for multiple NCAA Championships. On the men’s side, McGlaughlin helped Mark Andrew earn All-America honors with an eighth place NCAA finish in the 400 IM after he won Ivy League titles in the 200 breast and the 400 IM.
Prior to returning to the Philadelphia area, the native of West Chester, Pa. spent three years as the lead assistant coach at Georgetown and mentored the team’s strokers to unprecedented success. Her final season with the Hoyas was the 2017-18 campaign in which the women’s team was the BIG EAST runner-up to Villanova and the men’s team tallied a third place finish.
Drew Carbone, a freshman on the men’s team, was named the Most Outstanding Men’s Swimmer at the meet after winning conference titles in the 200 back and the 200 IM to go along with a runner-up finish in the 100 back. Molly Fitzpatrick from the women’s team posted an NCAA “B” standard in the 200 breast and was a double winner in the 100 breast and the 200 breast to go along with a sixth place finish in the 200 IM. Georgetown was also selected as a CSCAA Scholar All-America Team each of the three years that McGlaughlin was on staff.
As a Villanova student-athlete, McGlaughlin was a stroke specialty athlete with concentrations in the 100 and 200 breast as well as the 400 IM. She was a team captain as a senior in 2012-13 and concluded her collegiate career with lifetime best performances in the 100 breast (1:02.43) and the 200 breast (2:15.07) at the BIG EAST Championships. She was an eight-time BIG EAST scorer during her collegiate career, including a top-eight finish in the 200 breast as a senior. Her career accomplishments also include being a two-year member of the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee and a four-time selection to the BIG EAST All-Academic Team.
McGlaughlin continued her success on the USA Swimming circuit, swimming in the 2012 Olympic Trials and making appearances at several US Open Championships, USA Nationals and US Pro Series events. She achieved her Olympic Trials standard in the 100 meter breast (1:11.78) during competition at the 2012 US Pro Series Meet in Columbus, Ohio.
Following her graduation from Villanova, McGlaughlin remained on campus and part of Villanova Athletics as an aquatics intern and an intern in the Office of the Athletic Director under former Wildcats athletic director and current BIG EAST Deputy Commissioner Vince Nicastro. McGlaughlin also spent two years on Simpson’s staff in 2013-14 and 2014-15, which marked the first two years in the current string of nine consecutive BIG EAST titles for the Wildcats women’s program. Her responsibilities included serving as the recruiting coordinator for the men’s team and coordinating events for alumni and fans of Villanova swimming & diving. McGlaughlin also managed the setup and breakdown of meets and special events in addition to supervising the lifeguards at the Villanova Swim Complex.
McGlaughlin graduated cum laude from Villanova in 2013 with a Bachelor’s degree in Communication specializing in public relations and earned her Master's degree in Sports Industry Management from Georgetown in 2018.
