Dabo Swinney celebrates success of Clemson programs

Now that the spring transfer portal window is closed and recruiting of those key prospects has mostly ended, one of the most successful coaches in the Clemson program, Dabo Swinney, has finally had a little bit more of a chance to rest and relax.

He and his staff are still hard at work recruiting when they can, but Swinney has had the freedom to catch a couple other sports on campus recently.

“Oh I love it. Any chance I get, obviously sometimes the schedules don’t coincide, but I keep up and I try to communicate,” Swinney said recently at the ACC spring meetings. “I’m texting with coach (Erik) Bakich, I mean what a great job they’ve done, and keeping up with them. Super excited that we’re going to be able to host a Regional, hopefully they’ll do great in the ACC Tournament, kind of keep that momentum going.”

Clemson will look to do just that on Saturday when it takes on North Carolina in the ACC Tournament semifinals at 1 p.m. on the ACC Network.

The Tigers have likely already clinched a national seed that will make them an NCAA Regional and potentially NCAA Super Regional host, with the latest projections from D1Baseball having the Tigers as the No. 4 overall seed.

Baseball isn’t the only one of Clemson’s programs having major success, though.

Clemson softball is in the thick of an NCAA Super Regional against Oklahoma, the toughest team in the sport this year. They’re down a game and must win two straight to advance.

“Then to see coach (John) Rittman and them win it, because I haven’t had a lot of opportunities to see them play with the schedules and stuff,” Swinney said. “I hate they didn’t win the first one, but it gave me a chance to see them twice. Lot of fun. I mean they’re a great group of young ladies that are well-coached and really believe. I mean obviously (Valerie) Cagle she’s amazing, she’s fun to watch. But they’ve just got a bunch of really good players.

“And again, they’ve done a great job, coach Rittman and his staff, of putting it all together. It’s amazing to think that we didn’t have a softball program just a couple years ago and now we’ve already won a league, we’ve won a region, now we’ve won a second region. That’s exciting to see the momentum building in that program.”

Swinney, of course, has his own very successful Clemson program, one that will be looking to make a return to the College Football Playoff in 2023.

That can wait a bit, though. Swinney made sure to give the spring sports the limelight.

“Our track team won the ACC championship,” he said. “Obviously our lady golfers won the ACC. So it’s fun to see us having success across the board.”