Cal State East Bay Women, Concordia Men Capture PCSC Titles

Courtesy: Pacific Collegiate Swim Conference

Team Scores / Individual Scores

LA MIRADA, Calif. — The Cal State East Bay women and Concordia men collected their first-ever Pacific Collegiate Swim and Dive Conference championships on Saturday at Splash! Regional Aquatics Center. The Pioneers held onto the lead they built on Thursday and Friday to hold off Pepperdine in second and Fresno Pacific in third. For the men, the Eagles surged from third place with eight top-three finishes to overtake three-day leaders UC Santa Cruz and Fresno Pacific.

The Waves’ runner-up showing was their best since the 2008 championships, while the Sunbirds claimed their third straight top-three finish. Just behind FPU was Azusa Pacific in fourth, while Concordia and Loyola Marymount rounded out the top half of the women’s standings. Alaska-Fairbanks took seventh, followed by Biola and UC Santa Cruz and Arizona Christian. Soka and The Master’s University finished 11th and 12th, respectively.

For the men, the Banana Slugs posted their best finish since 2016, and the Sunbirds recorded their seventh consecutive top-three finish. Behind them, Biola took fourth, Soka claimed fifth and Master’s rounded out the standings in sixth.

After collecting 96 points for her team, the most of any women’s swimmers, Fresno Pacific’s Olga Tovstogan took home Swimmer of the Meet honors. Both Concordia’s Kyle Benjamin and FPU’s Iskender Baslakov earned 96 points for their teams to share Men’s Swimmer of the Meet honors. Azusa’s Melia Stout and UC Santa Cruz’s Ethan Johnson each won both the 1-meter and 3-meter diving events to earn the Diver of the Meet awards.

Banana Slugs dive coach Joan Newby was named Dive Coach of the Meet, while Concordia’s Kayle Morris and East Bay’s Shane Pelton won the Men’s and Women’s Swim Coach of the Meet awards. Pelton’s honor was his second straight, while Morris earned her first recognition as the Eagles’ interim head coach.

Courtesy: Cal State East Bay Athletics

For the first time in program history, the Cal State East Bay Pioneers are champions of the Pacific Collegiate Swim Conference.

The No. 23 ranked Pioneers captured three more event victories Saturday to close out the four-day championship meet with 1,306 points, pulling away from second-place Pepperdine to win by more than 100. Afterwards, Shane Pelton was voted PCSC Coach of the Meet for the second time.

Allie Klinger earned her second first-place finish of the week in the 100 Freestyle to start Saturday’s evening program. Peyton Wayment then won the 1650 Freestyle and Victoria Zukeran took the 200 Butterfly title, both in school record time.

Despite not accruing any diving points, the Pioneers proved themselves to be the deepest squad in the 12-team field. Klinger finished as the third-highest scoring swimmer at the championship meet with 92 total points. Wayment (85) and Zukeran (83) made it three Pioneers in the top-seven. Perhaps most impressively, CSUEB boasted 10 of the 40 highest-scoring individuals at the meet.

The final day of action featured seven events, and East Bay entered it with a 32-point lead. That advantage was quickly extended as Klinger established herself as the best sprint freestyler in the conference. Already PCSC champion in the 50 Free, Klinger touched the wall in the 100 Free in 50.97 seconds to claim another first-place medal.

The Pioneers had seven athletes score in the 100 Free, as Abigail Mitchell took 12th, Vivy Hua finished 13th, and Maddie Hulse placed 15th in the “B” Final. Lauren Ostrander (18th), Jande Monteon (20th), and Isabel Rishwain (22nd) scored in the “C” Final as well.

That was followed by the longest race of the meet, the 1650 Free. Wayment obliterated the rest of the field, winning the mile race by more than 30 seconds. Her time of 17:10.51 lowers her own program record, which she set back in December. Landry Walker turned in her best performance of the meet in that event as well, scoring fourth place points with a time of 17:47.79.

Miranda McDonnell paced the Pioneers in the 200 Backstroke with a fifth place finish in 2:07.44. They also had a pair of swimmers score in the “B” Final, as Alondra Ortiz took 12th and Tatum Roepke placed 15th.

Rebecca Bay qualified for the “A” Final in her second breaststroke event of the meet, earning a sixth place finish in the 200 Breast with a time of 2:24.24.

The next event was the 200 Fly, which saw a thrilling finish and a bit of history. Zukeran out-touched Azusa Pacific’s Emily Rigsby to claim the conference title and broke a school record that had stood for five years with her time of 2:04.73. Ortiz scored in the “B” Final as well for the Pioneers, taking 15th place.

That was followed by perhaps the most exciting race of the day. It was an extremely tight finish between the top four swimmers in the 100 Individual Medley, and although the Pioneers didn’t notch the win, they scored by far the most points of any team in the event. Hua placed third in 59.26, less than three-tenths of a second behind the winner. She was followed by Zukeran in fourth and Ryleigh Weight in sixth. Bay also took 12th-place points in the “B” Final.

The Pioneers closed out the meet and clinched their championship with a third place finish in the 400 Freestyle Relay. The foursome of Serene Augustain, Mitchell, Ostrander, and Klinger edged out Fresno Pacific and posted a time of 3:30.59.

After taking some time to celebrating this historic accomplishment, East Bay will next look ahead to NCAA Division II Championships. Several Pioneers have posted “B” cut times and will await the national qualifier announcement.