AUSTIN – Texas men's swim coach Eddie Reese is the kind of person you can tell anything.

Forget for a moment that the guy has taken walk-ons and turned them into Olympians. That he's taken Olympians and turned them into world-record holders.

Hired by then-athletic director Darrell Royal in 1978, Reese's nine national titles are more than any coach in Texas history.

He could win his 10th this weekend at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships in Minneapolis if his team can overcome Stanford and Auburn.

At the Beijing Olympics in 2008, he'll be the U.S. Olympic swim coach, just as he was in Athens in 2004, when American swimmers, including Michael Phelps and former Longhorns Ian Crocker, Aaron Piersol and Brendan Hansen, helped win 12 gold medals and 28 total.

"In 2004, we were very successful and it looked like I had a lot to do with that," Reese said. "But really, I just stayed out of the way."

Don't believe it for a second.

"Eddie stays on the cutting edge of training and technique," said Mark Schubert, the head coach and general manager of USA Swimming. "But what sets him apart is his personality. He's impossible not to like.

"When he brings you in and tells you something, you can't help but believe him because of the way he cares about people."

When asked for his secret to success, Reese says, "I remove myself from the equation." It's not until you talk to his current and former swimmers and his wife of 42 years, Elinor, that you understand what he's talking about.

It's his ability to listen, they say. A guy with so many skins on the wall, 35 years into his career as a head coach, is supposed to be sitting back and telling the world how he did it.

Instead, after all of his swimmers' 6 a.m. workouts, after every race and after every season, he listens to what they tell him and then evaluates and re-evaluates.

"I've never had the same workout twice," said senior Garrett Weber-Gale, the defending NCAA champ in the 100-meter freestyle.

Reese is passionate about challenging himself to learn and grow. His swimmers find it contagious. Reese has given up flour and sugar for Lent. He reads three books a week and still gets nervous calling a recruit. He uses one of his 12 coach of the year trophies as a doorstop in his office.

But he's not afraid to speak up if he sees something he doesn't like. After the 2000 NCAA Tournament, Reese called basketball coach Rick Barnes and told him he was working his guys too hard.

"All you do to speed during a year is kill it," Reese told Barnes. "Let them get their legs back."

Ever since, Barnes has tapered his practice schedule in February. Barnes, who had a reputation as Regular-Season Rick because of flameouts early in the postseason, has now been to the Sweet 16 four of the last five years.

"Eddie's a genius when it comes to how hard to push someone and when to back off," Barnes said.

Swimming can be cruel. Years in the pool lead up to a handful of life-changing meets for the elite competitors. In Reese's life, that means the NCAAs, the World Championships and the Olympics. If any part of the training leading up to a race is off, then the swimmer may come up short at the touch pad.

More often than not, Reese's game plan for a swimmer is dead on. Just ask Shaun Jordan, a walk-on at Texas who won Olympic gold in 1988 and '92. Or Crocker, Piersol and Hansen – elite talents out of high school who have set world records in the last three years.

"Eddie is like the world's best auto mechanic who can look under the hood and know exactly what's wrong," Hansen said.

Long before he's helped quicken their flip turns, changed their breath patterns or increased their flutter kicks, Reese has probably also been there for his swimmers on a personal level.

Weber-Gale can't count how many times he's called Reese at home after 9 p.m. to talk about things – from girl troubles to his grandmother contracting cancer.

"He'll just listen, and then he'll call you back the next day with some cancer research he's done or tell you how he and his wife took a class about how to fight fair," Weber-Gale said.

Hansen had one of the most heart-breaking moments in the Athens Olympics. He lost the 100-meter breaststroke – taking silver – by hundredths of a second to a swimmer who may have done an illegal kick during the race.

"When it was all over, Eddie said we may have gone too hard and that I may not have been rested," Hansen said. "For him to say he made a mistake, what other coach would do that when you're talking about fractions of a second?"

One of Reese's favorite quotes is from a book called Leadership is an Art by Max Depree, founder of Herman Miller furniture.

"The leader should always bear the pain and not give it," Reese said. So he makes every one of his swimmers' 6 a.m. workouts. And yet he makes his wife and two daughters feel like he is always putting his own family first.

"That's pretty hard to do with all the travel he does," Elinor said. "But he does it. That's Eddie's gift. People know he really cares. It's genuine."

Who: Texas men's swim coach and U.S. Olympic coach

Career: 29th season at Texas (nine national titles); Auburn (six seasons, 1973-78).

Success: Reese's Texas teams have finished in the top 10 nationally for 27 straight seasons and have won 28 straight conference titles. ... Reese has developed 40 NCAA individual champions, 29 national champion relays, 185 All-Americans and 22 Olympians who have won 21 gold medals.

Notable: Reese swam at Florida, where he became the first Gator to win five SEC titles in a single year and helped lead the Gators to three SEC titles (1961-63). His specialty was the breaststroke. ... Followed his wife, Elinor, to Roswell, N.M., in 1965, where she got a job teaching high school phys ed. ... Began college coaching as an assistant at Florida before becoming a head coach at Auburn in 1973.