Cal State Bakersfield head coach and Director of Swimming Chris Hansen is currently on paid administrative leave, the school confirmed to SwimSwam on Tuesday.
According to a source, Hansen has been on leave since returning from the Big West Championships in February, though the school declined to release any additional details beyond confirming it “because this is a personnel matter.”
Hansen has been the head coach at CSUB for 17 years, initially being hired in 2008 to serve as head coach of the men’s team before taking over as Director of Swimming in 2011.
This past season, the Roadrunner women’s team placed 5th out of six teams at the 2025 Big West Championships, while the men finished 5th out of five teams, with junior Vili Sivec winning conference titles in the men’s 100 and 200 fly.
Following the Big West meet, CSUB sent Sivec to the Bulldog NCAA Qualifying Meet, where he set a new school record in the 100 free in a time of 41.98, which ultimately saw him fall short of the NCAA Championship cutline by three one-hundredths of a second.
Sivec also set new school records in the 50 free (19.27), 200 free (1:33.48), 100 fly (45.61) and 200 fly (1:43.13) during the season.
In 2023-24, CSUB competed at the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Championships, with the women placing 5th out of 10 teams and the men taking 6th out of seven teams.
In 2019-20, the team’s last season in the Western Athletic Conference (WAC), Hansen coached Autumn D’Arcy to three individual conference titles, earning her WAC Swimmer of the Year honors, while Mikayla Popham won Freshman of the Year honors.
Couple points about Chris. Chris sent swimmers to Olympic trials and NCAA’s. Almost qualified Vili this past season to make NCAA’s in the 100. The team breaks school records year after year and shows continued improvement. Chris did right by me, my team, and teams before and after me. Was never just about swimming for Chris. He was also helping us become adults and be ready for the real world. He helped me get a position in Athletic Admin after undergrad which then helped me get a scholarship to the MBA program. We were competitive in the pool, classroom, and we won the community service award every year I was there. Stop labeling him a bad person. He was hard… Read more »
People have different experiences, and maybe you haven’t seen it the last few years.. it’s okay to have different opinions, no?? If he’s so amazing then what went wrong here?
Chris Hansen fought to save that program multiple times in his tenor. Every record on the school record board from the previous regime has been broken by Chris’s swimmers. The swim teams are always top academic performers amount all student athletes and they are always participants in community service throughout the year. I don’t know everyone’s story with Chris but I can speak about mine and on behalf of a number of former Csub student athletes when I say Chris was an excellent coach and friend. Seems like there a lot of bitter keyboard warriors hiding behind screen names in the comments with a grudge.
This same process led to losing an entire program at Cal Poly so just make sure your program is safe for long term.
Hansen spent 2 seasons as HC at Virginia Tech between 1996-98 and was fired a few weeks after being voted the A-10 Conference Coach of the Year. It wasn’t due to poor performance.
In the end, everybody gets there comeuppance. This one just happened to have been an entire generation in the making. There are a lot of people who this guy hurt have been waiting a very long time for him to get his.
What goes around comes around
A long, long, long time coming. Hallelujah
😂 lol
“I’m Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC……”
I read the headline and I was so tempted to make this joke lol
It’s never not funny….until he walks through the door of the house you “accidentially” wandered into.