The UCSB men’s swimming team, which has won an unprecedented 26 Big West titles over the last 34 years, will join the Pacific-10 Conference for competition beginning in the 2010-11 season. The Pac-10 made the announcement official on Monday.
Rather than wait until a conference meeting in October, the Pac-10 went to an e-mail vote recently to allow UCSB to compete immediately in the conference. This announcement comes on the heels of the UCSB women’s swim team joining the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.
The men’s swimming team will be the first UCSB squad in history to be affiliated with the prestigious Pac-10, which has the most national championships of any NCAA conference in the traditional Olympic sports.
“This is an exciting day for UCSB Athletics,” said Mark Massari, UCSB’s Director of Athletics. “The opportunity to have one of our most decorated teams compete in the conference of champions is terrific news. It provides our team, which has some of the best swimmers in the country, the chance to compete against an elite level of swimmers throughout the conference.”
The Pac-10 council, following the recommendation of the Senior Women Administrators Committee (SWAC), approved both UCSB and Cal Poly as affiliate members for the upcoming academic year.
“Joining the Pac-10 Championship meet could be the best thing that has happened to our men’s swimming program in the last two decades,” UCSB head coach Gregg Wilson said. “Competing against the best in the country can certainly make us better. We look forward to the challenge.”
The Pac-10 men’s swimming championships is in Long Beach at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool on March 2-5, 2011. The diving championships will be held in conjunction with the Pac-10 women’s swimming championships, which will be February 23-26, 2011 at the Weyerhaueser King County Aquatics Complex in Federal Way, Washington.
UCSB is in the initial stages of developing a proposed new aquatics facility and has hired Blackbird Architects for the conceptual designing of a future intercollegiate aquatics facility on campus. The planned site is behind the Intercollegiate Athletics (ICA) building and will face east towards the recreation fields.
