The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Hall of Honor
- Induction:
- 2023
A key member of Texas Swimming & Diving’s first national championship team, Kris Kirchner was an NCAA individual champion and three-time relay national champion with the Longhorns. He spent his freshman and sophomore years swimming at Cleveland State from 1977-79 before transferring to Texas. Once on the Forty Acres, he became part of the core crew that helped launch the Longhorn Swimming & Diving dynasty, leading Texas to a Southwest Conference Championship (SWC) and NCAA runner-up finish in 1980, before guiding UT to its first-ever Swimming & Diving National Championship in 1981. During his first year at UT, Kirchner helped Texas capture the first relay national championship in program history in 1980, anchoring the 400-yard medley relay that set a then-American record of 3:14.59. A team captain in 1981, he became the first Longhorn to win the 50-yard freestyle national title with a swim of 19.66. He then added national crowns in the 400-medley relay, again anchoring an American record swim with a time of 3:12.93, and then opening the championship-winning 400-yard free relay. At the conference level, he won back-to-back SWC titles in 1980-81 in both the 50 free and 100 free, making him the second Longhorn to accomplish consecutive doubles in the events and first since Lon P. Watkins in 1933-34. Internationally, Kirchner won gold in the 4x200m free relay at the 1979 Pan American Games in San Juan, Puerto Rico. That same year, he anchored the United States national champions in the 400-meter medley relay and 400-yard medley relay. Kirchner earned a spot on the United States Olympic Team in 1980 as a member of the 100m and 400m free relays, but was unable to compete due to the U.S. boycott of the Moscow Olympics. Kirchner added a third career United States championship in 1981, when he anchored the title-winning 400-meter medley relay. Following his swimming career, Kirchner served as an assistant coach at Texas under legendary head coach Eddie Reese. He then took over the program at the University of South Carolina in 1985, serving as the Gamecocks men’s head coach from 1985-90 and women’s head coach from 1985-87. While in Columbia, he guided South Carolina to five Metro Conference men’s championships and one women’s title. He later moved to the University of Indiana, where he was the men’s head swimming and diving head coach from 1990 to 2002, winning Big 10 Men’s Swimming Co-Coach of the Year honors in 1991. A Solon, Ohio native, he was a 1992 inductee into the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame.
