ORONO – It’s not something the Lizzottes talk about around the dinner table. They don’t argue about it, and they don’t really do it that much anymore.

Swimming brought Jaret and Susie Lizzotte together, but six years after they met while competing for the University of Maine, their focus is on another aspect of the sport entirely.

The two are now assistant coaches under Jeff Wren, who is in his 33rd year with the Black Bear program. Jaret Lizzotte works with the divers, while Susie Lizzotte assists with the swimmers.

Wren figures the Lizzottes are at least the sixth married couple to have met as UMaine swimmers, but the first to serve as coaches. It’s a combination that has clicked in the years they’ve been working together with Wren.

Jaret Lizzotte, a native of Old Town, was a diver and swimmer for his town’s high school team. He focused on swimming for the Black Bears and became one of the team’s top sprinters before his 1998 graduation.

Susie Lizzotte came to Orono as Susie Herrick, a native of Wenham, Mass., who was looking for a school that would emphasize academics while allowing her to continue her swimming career. She excelled at both her academics and athletics, winning four America East individual event titles and setting six school records while earning two scholar-athlete awards before graduating in 2000.

The two married July 28, 2001.

The UMaine men’s and women’s teams spend a lot of time together in practices, on the road – including winter training trips to Florida – and at meets, where swimmers and divers often have a lot of downtime between events. It’s no wonder couples get together, and that’s just how the Lizzottes met.

Wren sometimes doesn’t realize when teammates have become more than friends. Usually, he said, it’s those relationships that work out the best. In fact, he added, most of the couples he knows about don’t last – because many of them have problems.

“With a number of [couples], you weren’t aware of it on a daily or hourly basis, much less so than some of the ones who don’t end up together after a while,” said Wren, who has attended several UMaine swimming weddings. “They bring a measure of restraint. There’s an attitude of maturity.”

One reason Wren couldn’t tell Jaret Lizzotte and Susie Herrick were dating was that the couple didn’t have a problem spending time apart. They didn’t always sit together on bus trips, had different groups of friends, and Susie always spent summers between school years in Massachusetts.

And they were friends for a year before starting to date when Jaret Lizzotte was a junior and Susie Lizzotte was a sophomore.

“If you would have seen us on the deck no one would have guessed that we were together,” Susie Lizzotte said. “We stayed separate. If you were sitting up here, you wouldn’t be able to figure it out. That’s how we operated.”

And they didn’t always swim together, either.

“We separated things,” Jaret Lizzotte said. “When we were in the pool, she was doing her thing and I was doing mine. She was always faster than I was, so she was in the fast lane anyway.”

Jaret Lizzotte began coaching the divers in the fall of 1998 while finishing his degree at Maine. In 2000 Susie Lizzotte was finishing her schoolwork when Wren asked her to join the staff. At the time the staff was made up of Wren, Jaret Lizzotte, and assistant coach Mark Babin.

“They really wanted a female because if anything ever went wrong in the locker room [the coaches] couldn’t get in there,”

she said. “So that was me.”

Babin left in 2000, and Susie Lizzotte became the top assistant.

With the season in full swing, Susie Lizzotte is at Maine’s Stanley Wallace Pool at 7:45 a.m. and isn’t usually out until after 6 p.m. On days the Bears have morning practices she’s at the pool by 5:45 a.m.

It’s a long day for Jaret Lizzotte, too, who heads from his job as a physical education teacher in Glenburn to the pool for afternoon diving practices.

The couple doesn’t swim together nowadays. When they do exercise, it’s more likely to be a jog. And they try to leave swimming talk at the pool.

“We try to deal with all the issues we have here so that when we get home we try to be ourselves,” Jaret Lizzotte said.

Lizzotte was a Class B state champion diver in addition to playing football and baseball for Old Town High, and he’s using that knowledge and experience to build up UMaine’s program.

All four of the Black Bear men’s divers are Maine natives, while six of seven of the women come from instate. And the Maine program has one of the largest diving squads in America East.

“In my program, I get kids that haven’t dove before, and it’s really neat to see how far they come and how they develop,” Jaret Lizzotte said. “I take anybody. You don’t have to have any experience whatsoever, although if you have gymnastics experience, it’s a lot easier. You can transfer things over. But I’ll take anybody.”