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.
Bottom line, Bay Club destroyed a children’s swim club. And with their malice destruction, they crushed children’s dreams, friendships, and future generations of young athletes looking for a place to belong. They should have done the morally correct thing instead of causing the children and families so much pain and heartbreak. As a member of the Pleasanton Bay Club myself, I have witnessed their greed and corrupt behavior and it is shameful. Their leaders at corporate lack any respect or integrity for families and have only proved to be for profit as they deceitfully claim to be a family gym. It is shameful that they could be so cruel and selfish in their actions and not even consider the consequences… Read more »
Crows exceptional coaches and their athletes positive, hard working and high standard culture will be blended with the Seahawks flawlessly – you are taking high character families to do what they all do best.. engage in team work, set and accomplish personal goals and in the end, enjoy the sport of swimming in their team community. Congratulations to both teams and to Coach Natina for having the courage to make change to respect his athletes bright swimming careers over supporting corporate private equity greed! LFG!
Wish nothing but the best for all the families! As a former Seahawk family, we loved the team and the families. We also enjoyed spending time with the Crow families during competitions!
Some of yall need to chill! It is all about the kids!
Joe, at his heart, is a winner and he creates winners, hence the progression of swimmers he’s seen ascend to Olympic level. He drives a meritocracy and while that’s tough he produces winners who want to win. He taught both my daughters to swim. For that I’m grateful and any team that gets his passion and fight to win is gonna win. The details are gonna best lost in legal bs and narratives to feed your narratives. This sucks but Joe produces, and for that, thank you Joe!
Crow did not lose their pool, but did have to rent pool space at multiple locations to accom. the large size groups. Bay Club wanted to build teams at all their locations, Natina felt that was not a good plan personally. Folding the team into PLS instead. It’s sad that there are no teams left now at Crow Canyon CC with the end of Sharks after the end the summer rec team a few years ago. Sharks was formed in 2005 by Ethan Hall & Dan Cottam. Some incredible swimmers passed through that tiny 6 lane pool!
Btw, Natina is taking a huge risk, as Steve retains control of the “merger”.
Training schedules will be Seahawk schedules, uniforms will be PLS uniforms. Team name will be Pleasanton Seahawks, and Steve will rule the way he always has: with no regard for the toxic environment within the team, disdain for paying parents, and an org structure of lap dogs doing everything he says.
Non-profit orgs like the Seahawks don’t have an owner. So Steve doesn’t own it. He controls it through his pals in the board of directors. With an iron fist and like a dictator. If the board members weren’t yes men, he should’ve been kicked out a long time ago.
Natina is in for a surprise. This whole thing will be a disaster of epic proportions.
The super team of the Bay Area
Loooong time Crow family and I would agree this will be “The” Super Team of Nor Cal or at least Bay Area.