Pacific Swimming is seeing a merger between two powerhouse programs as the Crow Canyon Sharks have merged into the Pleasanton Seahawks. The clubs, which are located about 11 miles apart from each other, are in Danville and Pleasanton, CA, which is in the Bay area, East of San Francisco and North of San Jose.
This is a very significant program merger, as Crow Canyon is a USA Swimming Gold Medal club for 2025, while Pleasanton Seahawks is a Silver Medal club. Pleasanton Seahawks reached Podium Club status within the USA Swimming Club Excellence program, as they were a Gold Medal club from 2017-2020. The Club Excellence program is one of USA Swimming’s metrics for evaluating the success of its club teams. Club Excellence points are earned once a swimmer reaches the Summer Junior Nationals cut in an event. In order to become a Gold Medal club, as Crow Canyon is for the 2025 season, the club must be one of the top 20 scoring clubs in the country with a swimmer that has achieved a gold time standard. The gold time standards are equal to the 150th-ranked woman and 200th-ranked man in the world in that event from the previous year (LCM times are only considered for Club Excellence). To become a Podium Club, as Pleasanton Seahawks did, a club must be a Gold Medal program in 4 consecutive years.
All of that is to say that this a merger of two high performing clubs who have a track record of being very competitive at the local, Pacific Swimming, Western Zone, Junior National, and National levels.
Here is the Instagram post put out by the Pleasanton Seahawks about the merger.
More information was given by the Crow Canyon Sharks’ Instagram post on the merger, which outlined that former Crow Canyon head coach Joe Natina will become the co-head coach of Pleasanton Seahawks alongside Steve Morsilli, their existing head coach, who also founded and owns the team. Additionally, all of Crow Canyons’ staff will be retained and make the transition to Pleasanton Seahawks as well. That IG post can be found below.
The language in the Crow Canyons post makes it sound as though they plan to merge the training groups as well, as opposed to retaining the separate sites and operating as they were before the merger, just under one banner.
Crow Canyon has been steadily making waves over the past few years. SwimSwam published a piece on their performance at the 2023 Winter Juniors West meet, as they won the girls team title at the meet with just 10 swimmers. They had a similar showing at the 2024 Winter Juniors West meet, where they finished 3rd in the girls standings with just 8 swimmers. Crow Canyon took 4th in combined scoring at the meet.
Pleasanton Seahawks have been making waves recently mostly for the massive success of Luka Mijatovic. Mijatovic, just 15 years old now, has already broken 11 National Age Group Records in his career. Most recently, he ripped a 4:12.34 500 freestyle to shatter Drew Kibler’s 15-16 NAG at just 15 years old. Mijatovic won the boys 200 free and 400 free at Junior Pan Pacs last summer.
This new era of the Pleasanton Seahawks will certainly be an exciting one to follow.
The Pleasant Crow Sea Sharks?
Merging training groups will be interesting from a coaching standpoint. It sounds good that now the elite groups are bigger, and I assume co-coached. I guess if the coaches have a good working relationship and can co plan under the same philosophy it will work Days of specific sprint/distance/IM training with one coach or the other but if certain swimmers don’t jive with “new coach” it could cause issues. Lots of ins and outs on a merger like this. .
One note, Crow Canyon lost their pool, which is why it is not a multi -site approach.
what happened
Club bought by larger corporate group. Reassessing operations.
I wonder how or if training programs will change at all. Crow Canyon used to be more of a sprint-based program similar to USRPT, and PLS was a distance-based program.
Why would you want to join the likes of Morsilli with all of his controversies.
Not sure how it is on the west coast, but super teams are already the norm on the east coast. One in my LSC with around 15 sites. Not really a team depending on your definition of the word. A couple of the sites are even franchised.
Rackley in Qld, Australia is the same. They even pushed out a well respected coach (offered him way less pay).
LeBron may now join the Sharks.
“I’m going to take my talents to… the Pleasanton sharks”
The superteam is forming…as a bay area swimmer I’m scared