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Frank Rockwell Comfort, 1967 (Swimming)
The three-time swimming letterwinner Frank Comfort participated on the varsity team from 1965 to 1967 after competing on the freshman squad in 1964. After graduating from Syracuse with a bachelor's degree in history, he began his coaching career at the University of North Carolina as the head freshman coach and varsity assistant. In 1968 he earned a master's degree in physical education from UNC.
In 1968 he was named the head men's swimming and diving coach at Johns Hopkins University. During his nine-year tenure at JHU, the Bluejays won eight Middle Atlantic Conference Championships and four Mason Dixon Conference Championships. They recorded seven Top 10 NCAA Division III finishes, winning the title in 1977 and finishing second in 1975 and 1976. Comfort also started the women's swimming program and was the coach for two seasons. He accrued an overall .769 winning percentage for both the men's and women's teams.
He returned to UNC in 1977 as the head coach and led the program for 30 years. The winningest coach in Atlantic Coast Conference history, Comfort led the Tar Heels to 26 league championships (16 women, 10 men). His 576 dual meet victories are the most of any swimming and diving coach in NCAA history.
Comfort coached numerous U.S. and foreign Olympians and NCAA, AIAW and U.S. swimming national champions. He served eight times as head coach or an assistant on international trips for the U.S. National Team and 10 times for U.S. teams on domestic trips. In 1996, he was inducted to the Johns Hopkins University Athletics Hall of Fame and the Maryland Swimming Hall of Fame. In 2007, he was named as a Carolina Priceless Gem, UNC's highest athletics award, and was honored with the North Carolina High School Athletic Association Award of Distinction.
An active member of his community, Comfort volunteer as an assistant boys basketball coach and directs a year-round strength training program for the boys and girls basketball teams at Sullivan County High School, has served as an officer with the Sullivan County Scholarship Association since 1997, and as member and board member of Eagles Mere Community Church dating back to 1998.
Comfort is a long-term Varsity Club member and in 1999 endowed a scholarship in the School of Education in honor of his mother, Frances Meck Comfort, who graduated from Syracuse in 1940. In all, 16 members of his family have graduated from Syracuse University.
