By Jim Fenton
BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- The first move he made after graduating from the former Bridgewater State College had a Larry Bird connection.
Michael Caruso, who graduated from Bridgewater State in 2002 with a degree in physical education, elected to pursue a Master's degree in sports management and recreation, so he headed to a place that Bird had made famous during the 1970s.
Caruso attended Indiana State University in Terre Haute, the college where Celtics legend Bird surprisingly led to a 1979 NCAA championship game showdown with Magic Johnson and Michigan State.
The state of Indiana is where Caruso earned his Master's degree and began a career as a swimming & diving coach at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a position he held for six years.
For a Boston sports fan, being on the campus where Bird burst onto the basketball scene before leading the Celtics to three NBA championships was a thrill. And Caruso was in attendance for a Feb. 28, 2004 ceremony when Bird's No. 33 was retired by Indiana State.
"It was awesome," said Caruso, who has been the men's and women's swimming & diving coach at Bridgewater State University since 2011. "He is still huge there. It doesn't go away, especially in Terre Haute.
"Being from here and seeing it on the Terre Haute side was interesting. The impact he had on that region was huge."
Caruso returned to Massachusetts in 2008 and worked as a swimming coach in the town of Concord before getting the job at his alma mater as aquatics director and the men's and women's coach in 2011.
After swimming the breaststroke for three seasons at Bridgewater State, Caruso is in his 13th year on the job and has brought success to both Bears' teams.
Since joining the Little East Conference as an affiliate member in 2021, the men have won all three conference championships while the women have finished in second place three consecutive years.
Caruso was selected the Little East men's coach of the year for a second straight season after the Bears compiled 955 points in late February for the title.
"I take an enormous amount of pride in coaching here," said Caruso. "I don't even know if I have the words to explain the amount of pride I have in what we've been able to do here and what we're going to continue to do here.
"We've done things the program had never done. We have tons of records, a national swimmer, a national diver. But it's the conference championships that had never happened, three for the men and so close for the women.
"It has totally changed the program. It's nice to have hardware. It solidifies what you've been trying to build through these years. I think there's a lot more stability in this program. I think this program's going to live for a long time."
Caruso arrived at Bridgewater State in the late 1990s as a student who wanted to get into coaching, but swimming & diving was not on his radar at the time.
"I was like anybody else who came here for physical education," said Caruso. "I wanted to coach my high school football team. That was the dream. Then you learn the reality of coaching, and coaching collegiate athletes is exactly where I want to be and only where I ever want to be.
"I've always wanted to coach. That's something I knew I wanted to do. The sport was always in question. For some reason, swimming and I connected when I started swimming in college. It just made sense to me in how the athletes worked. I was determined to make college swimming more about the team than an individual sport. Year after year, we've made it a team focus and that's why we've become the program we've become.
"I love working with the young men and women in this program. It is an absolute blast, good or bad. It's something I've had a lot of fun with. I love being able to give back something. If I can affect the journey of a young man or woman in just a small part, then I get all the satisfaction I need out of this job."
Caruso's first coaching job was on a part-time basis at Rose-Hulman where Matt Smith won a national championship in the 100 breaststroke in 2003. Caruso was picked as the men's coach of the year in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin in 2008.
"They were looking for a part-time coach and I had a friend in the graduate school program who was also a swimmer," said Caruso. "He mentioned they were looking for a coach and I was looking for a job. I didn't have a graduate assistant position (at Indiana State) and I needed to make money. I was very surprised. It really worked out well."
When Caruso returned to Massachusetts, he applied for head coaching jobs at Wheaton College and Bridgewater State, and happily accepted the position at the program where he once swam.
"It was an absolute dream come true," he said. "I could not have been happier."
The Bears had been competing in the New England Intercollegiate Swimming & Diving Association before moving to the Little East.
The men's and women's teams are established under Caruso as the three-year run by both squads has shown.
Freshman Aaron Fowler (Brookline, Mass.) was the men's swimmer and rookie swimmer of the year this season after setting school and Little East meet records in three butterfly events.
Sophomore Cailey Simard (Haverhill, Mass.) was named the Little East women's diver of the year for a second straight season and is taking part in the NCAA Division 3 Northeast/North Diving Regional in Maine Friday and Saturday.
During Caruso's years as the head coach, the BSU men have broken all 23 swimming records, including the three by Fowler this season. The women have established 13 swimming records and all but one diving record with four of the five diving marks belonging to Simard.
"It sure has changed since I was a swimmer here," said Caruso, a two-time captain who earned the Lee Harrington Unsung Hero Award in 2001. "Back in the day, we had part-time coaches. They were great coaches, but they weren't here. We saw them for practice and meets.
"I like to think our program is in a much more stable place than it's ever been. We've got good kids who work really hard. It's a well respected program among our peers.
"We got a great comment from Eastern Connecticut last week. One of our coaches was talking to their head coach and we were saying how excited we were for them and how great they did (at the Little East meet). The head coach's response to our assistant coach was 'We're modeling our team after yours. You're the team we're striving to be.'
"That caught me off guard a little bit. We're not a full member of the Little East. We're just an affiliate team. I think we have earned a lot of respect from our peers in the Little East and our peers in New England. When you start to do that, it kind of supersedes any time or athletic achievement. Teams respect you for who you are, and how you treat them is super important."
Caruso is happy to be back at the place he attended as a student more than two decades ago.
He took a long route, moving to the home of Larry Bird and getting a first head coaching job in Indiana, but now he's back and entrenched at Bridgewater State running successful programs.
"I chose the farthest school away," said Caruso of going to Indiana State. "There was no rhyme or reason to it. I thought if I was going to have a job in sports, I needed a Master's degree to be in this field of collegiate sports.
"Indiana State was far away. I had never been farther west than Connecticut in my life, so here we go, I packed up my truck drove out to the Midwest."
He got to see the place where it all began for Bird and even made the 170-mile trip to see the clinching game of the 2004 World Series in Missouri when the Red Sox defeated the St. Louis Cardinals for their first championship in 86 years.
It was all part of laying the groundwork for Caruso to get back to his alma mater as a successful head coach.