Coach Dave Durden of the University of California- Berkeley is this season’s Pac-12 Men’s Coach of the Year.
This is Durden’s sixth time receiving the award in the past seven years. This season, he led the Golden Bears to a third-place finish at Pac-12 Championships and a second-place finish at NCAA Championships.
Cal took eight championship titles at the Pac-12 Conference Championships, more than any other team in the field. Golden Bear Andrew Seliskar took home the Swimmer of the Meet title, after scoring gold medals in the 200 fly, 200 IM, 400 IM, 400 free relay, 400 medley relay, and 800 medley relay.
Under Durden’s leadership at NCAAs, Cal’s Ryan Murphy took home a pair of individual titles and Josh Prenot scored one of his own. Murphy also scored the title CSCAA Swimmer of the Year for the second year running, this time alongside Texas’s Joseph Schooling and Florida’s Caeleb Dressel. Cal placed in the overall NCAA top two for the seventh year in a row.
University of Southern California head diving coach Hongping Li took the Men’s Diving Coach of the Year title, after his divers scored individual championships in two of the three events at the 2016 Pac-12 Championships. Dash Enos took the three-meter title, and Collin Pollard won the platform competition. At NCAAs, Pollard took seventh in the one-meter event and Deon Reid scored tenth. This marks Li’s second Pac-12 Men’s Diving Coach of the Year title.
That’s awesome! I didn’t even realize we won the 8 medley relay.