Last week, the Pac 12 voted to move their men’s Swimming & Diving Championship Meet from the Belmont Plaza pool in Long Beach, California to the King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, Washington. Their hand was forced after Belmont was closed for the second time in two years to examine its safety, integrity, and long-term viability.
This week, the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation followed suit and announced that their mens & womens meets will be moved as well. Swimming will be held at the East Los Angeles College from February 20th-23rd, with diving to take place the same weekend at the US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
East LA is the same pool that the Pac 12 used for the men last season when Belmont was closed. There were no obvious problems, other than some complaints about the perceived quality of the facility; it has two 8-lane, 25-yard pools, however, and has a long history of producing fast swims, so even without the glitz and glam of a place like King County, it’s still a good backup option in a state that has very few.
The Air Force Academy has been used for a number of major diving competitions, including NCAA Zone events, as one of the few pools in the area with a 10 meter platform. It’s a bit on the older side, but still a good choice. Though there is plenty of space there for holding a meet like the MPSF Championship, hosting events where swimmers are shooting for NCAA qualifying times are not usually preferable at 6,000 feet above sea level.
The Mountain Pacific Sports Federation is an Olympic Sports conference that focuses on hosting teams from conferences that have abandoned those sports, such as swimming, men’s volleyball, water polo, lacrosse, men’s soccer, gymnastics, and track. BYU are the defending champions of both the men’s and women’s meets, with UC-Santa Barbara taking 2nd in the women’s meet last year and the UNLV men doing the same. The programs that compete in swimming & diving are:
Men’s Teams (10)
- Air Force
- BYU
- CSU Bakersfield
- Denver
- Hawaii
- UNLV
- North Dakota
- Pacific
- Seattle U
- Wyoming
Women’s Teams (8)
- BYU
- Cal Poly SLO
- Hawaii
- UC Davis
- UC Santa Barbara
- Loyola Marymount
- Pacific
- San Diego
MPSF Championships are going to be great! Especially on the mens side with Wyoming, Denver and UNLV all in the mix and all with NCAA bound swimmers!
Something about East LA is different from what I remember in the 1970’s. There were no underwaters in those days of course and the breaststroke was swam slighly differently since you couldn’t dipped your head.
I mean the So Cal Community College Conferance in 1976 and 1977 in East LA
East La was not built until 1975 it didn’t exist in the 1960’s actually Belmont did in 1968. I know this since I swam the HIgh School girls CIF and the times today would be compared to Division 4 CIF. I also swam in in East La in Community College but Jean is righ the pool is dated.
Born in East La, Born in East LA.
LOL. I did like the food truck parked outside the ELAC facility at PAC 12’s last year. Really good burritos, carne asada tacos, etc.
Agreed, nobody, least of all Air Force themselves, wanted to swim the Championship meet at 7258 feet above sea level. But that does not affect diving, nor does it take away the fact that the Cadet Natatorium is a world class facility, and certainly not old. It just re-opened in August 2011.
Re: Air Force. Facility looks really nice but they probably didn’t want to have their conference meet at 7000+ feet above sea level.
I’ll try and read the article next time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPSi59rMuqA