Ryan Lochte, who was hired as Missouri State Swimming and Diving’s newest assistant coach on Sunday, will be making $34.10 an hour with the Bears.
The 12-time Olympic medalist’s contract, obtained by Front Office Sports on Monday, runs from August 2026 to June 2027 and is worth an estimated $30,000 annually. Bonuses in the contract include:
- $750 for an MVC men’s and women’s Conference Championship or Co-Championship
- $500 for each NCAA Championship individual qualifier
- $500 for each relay team that qualifies for the NCAA Championship
Other benefits and incentives included in the contract, which will officially be approved by Missouri State University’s Board of Governors in June, include participation in camps and clinics. Not included is a university-issued car, which was granted to MSU head coach David Collins, but not the other four coaches on staff.
Lochte’s contract is less than what Collins ($85,074) and associate head coach Chelsea Dirks-Ham ($52,732) make annually, but around the same ballpark as what fellow assistant Anna Miller made ($33,000) this season and what assistant Lee Smothers ($32,960) made during the 2024-25 school year. Lochte also will be paid more than diving coach James Huelskamp, who earns $19.94 an hour.
The NCAA repealed its volunteer coaching roles in 2023. The elimination of unpaid positions in college sports came after a class-action lawsuit that was filed by nearly 1,000 baseball coaches. The suit was settled in 2025.
It is currently unclear how often Lochte will be expected to help out the Bears. A Missouri State spokesperson told FOS that Lochte’s schedule “will have to be ironed out when he arrives on campus and works with Coach Collins on the weekly team schedules.”
Lochte’s role with MSU is his first professional coaching job. His girlfriend, kindergarten teacher Molly Gillihan, is from Springfield, Missouri, where MSU is located.
Though he never formally retired from swimming, Lochte last competed at the 2021 U.S. Olympic trials, where he finished seventh in the 200-meter individual medley. Since then, he has auctioned off three of his Olympic medals, which sold for a combined $316,000 this January.
A four-time Olympian, Lochte trails just Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky in total Olympic medals. He is a six-time Olympic champion and has broken world records across two individual events and two different relays, including the U.S. 4×200 men’s freestyle relay squad from the 2009 World Championships that still holds the world record today. He also competed for Florida from 2003 to 2007, where he was a seven-time NCAA champion.
However, Lochte’s career was not one without controversy. At the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, he falsely claimed that he was robbed at gunpoint alongside three of his USA Swimming teammates. It was later revealed the group allegedly vandalized a gas station bathroom. Lochte received a 10-month suspension from USA swimming for his actions.
In 2018, Lochte was suspended for 14 months by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency for receiving an IV infusion of vitamins greater than 100mL in a 12-hour period without a Therapeutic Use Exemption (TUE), which is prohibited by the organization.
Missouri State men’s swimming and diving won the 2026 MVC title and qualified one swimmer for the NCAA Championships. Meanwhile, the women’s team most recently won a title in 2024 as part of an eight-year win streak. Now-assistant Miller is the women’s team’s first and only NCAA qualifier.
