The Western Athletic Conference announced last week that they will be adding two new members to the conference’s women’s swimming & diving lineup next season: Northern Colorado and Cal State-Bakersfield.
They join a growing list of programs coming to the WAC in the next few years. Aside from these two programs, the Denver women and Seattle University will join the conference in women’s swimming, and then in 2013-2014, the mid-major powerhouse Boise State women will come on board as well.
The Bakersfield women finished 7th at the MPSF Championships last year, but graduated a big-time senior class that included Canadian Olympic Trials qualifier Rachel McCall. They will be led next season by senior backstroker Lily Donohue, with a best of 2:01.22 in the 200 back.
The Bears of Northern Colorado, also coming from the MPSF, tied for 8th in that conference last season. They, however, were a much younger team, leaning heavily on freshmen and sophomores. That includes butterflier Gina Riggle, who had a best of 56.52 in the 100 fly last season, which would have put her close to the top of the pile at the WAC Championships.
With the addition of these two programs, and former Sun Belt Conference powerhouse Denver, the competition for the WAC title will increase big-time next season. What could be really interesting is that Texas State and UT-San Antonio are both joining the conference as full members next season. Neither currently has a swimming program, but they are located in Texas (where swimming is really underrepresented at the college level relative to the swimming population) and both have athletics programs that are improving and expanding at a rapid pace. That includes UTSA’s first season with an intercollegiate football team during the 2011-2012 academic year. If the conference could convince either of those teams to add a swimming program, it would be a huge boost to the sport (though UTSA is leaving for Conference USA the year after arriving).
With the 3rd-6th place teams from last year’s Championship meet leaving the conference (including Hawaii and New Mexico State), Denver will battle defending champions San Jose State and Northern Arizona for this year’s conference title.
Full 2012-2013 WAC Women’s Swimming lineup:
Idaho
New Mexico State
Seattle*
San Jose State
Northern Arizona
North Dakota
Northern Colorado
CSU-Bakersfield