John Trembley

John Trembley swam for UT during the years from 1970 to 1975, winning nine NCAA championships and setting three records. He was a nine-time All-American. He had enrolled at Tennessee planning eventually to become a dentist. He graduated in 1975 with a BA in philosophy.

His swimming career all but ended in 1975 when he suffered a head injury while playing flag football. He spent six weeks in the hospital and never fully recovered. Ray Bussard, his swimming coach at Tennessee, convinced him to come to Tennessee as an assistant in the swimming and diving program. He served as an assistant from 1975 until 1980, when he became head swimming coach at a prep school in Pennsylvania. He returned to UT as head swimming and diving coach in 1988. Trembley’s accomplishments at UT included coaching the team to SEC titles in 1989 and 1996 and winning the SEC’s Coach of the Year award six times.

On December 2, 2011, a complaint was received by UT that Trembley had solicited funds from former UT swimmer Melvin Stewart and asked him to make the check out to Trembley, rather than to UT. Campus police searched Trembley’s university computer in December looking for evidence of financial wrongdoing and found e-mails soliciting sex and pornographic images that had been sent from his UT computer during a two-week period in 2011 while he was in California.

UT officials confronted him on January 3, 2012, and Trembley asked to retire with two years’ pay, saying that he had been severely depressed and had a substance abuse problem for which he had sought treatment. Vice Chancellor and Director of Athletics Dave Hart fired Trembley, who chose not to appeal. UT turned the materials over to the Knoxville Police Department Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force for investigation. KPD Investigator Richard Giammarino, a financial crimes specialist, and ICAC investigators worked the case for the next four months but determined the evidence did not support criminal charges.

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  • Title John Trembley
  • Author
  • Keywords John Trembley
  • Website Name Volopedia
  • Publisher University of Tennessee Libraries
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  • Access Date July 12, 2025
  • Original Published Date
  • Date of Last Update October 19, 2018