PHARR — The final decision to bring the 2023 Western Athletic Conference swimming and diving championship to the Rio Grande Valley was made before the City of Pharr Natatorium was even complete.
That’s how sharp UTRGV’s proposal to host the event sat with WAC commissioner Brian Thornton and the rest of the conference decision makers.
“It was the vision sold to us by the administration,” said Thornton, who made his first trip to the Valley since being named WAC commissioner in November 2021. “Obviously this venue turned out better than our imagination could ever have been.”
The championships Feb. 22-25 will mark the eighth time UTRGV has been part of hosting a WAC championship-level event, along with the 2017 and the upcoming 2022 WAC volleyball championship, the 2017 and 2021 WAC outdoor track and field championships, the 2016 and 2019 WAC tennis and the 2014 WAC cross-country championships at Champion Lakes Golf Course.
Thornton spent Tuesday visiting with UTRGV Vice President and Director of Athletics Chasse Conque along with several other officials and Valley residents, while also touring facilities such as Bert Ogden Arena, H-E-B Park, UTRGV athletic facilities and the natatorium.
“This has been fantastic,” Thornton said. “To have this facility here is an awesome opportunity for our student athletes not only because the venue is so fantastic, but also the opportunity for them to come to the Valley and see a part of the country most of them would not have the opportunity to have otherwise. We are so please to have this partnership.
The institutions competing in the 2023 WAC swimming & diving championships include Air Force, California Baptist, Grand Canyon, Idaho, Incarnate Word, New Mexico State, Northern Arizona, Northern Colorado, Seattle U, UNLV, Utah Tech and Wyoming.
“What hosting the WAC Championships does is shine the national spotlight on UTRGV, the City of Pharr, and the entire Rio Grande Valley,” UTRGV President Guy Bailey said in a Monday news release. “More importantly, it helps us to show our young people where swimming and diving can take them. If they work hard both in the classroom and the competition pool, they too can earn scholarships and compete in events like this in beautiful facilities such as the one here in Pharr.”
UTRGV will launch its women’s swimming and diving program in 2024 as part of a referendum passed by UTRGV students and then the UT board that, among other additions, includes football starting in 2025.
“When UTRGV joined the WAC the conference was far different that today,” Thornton said. “We are full of institutions that see the big picture and have the desire to compete at the national level. It’s also about our student athletes and the places they go — Seattle, Phoenix, Utah, Dallas, the Valley — they get to go all over the Western United States and would not have if not for athletics.”
“This has been extra special to be able to host Commissioner Thornton on his first trip to the Valley,” Conque said. “We have had several wonderful stops and I think he has been very impressed and has seen what makes the Valley so special.”
“To have this facility, one of the best in the entire country, is fantastic,” Thornton said. “I look forward to our institutions coming down here and seeing this facility and experiencing what the Valley as to offer.”
The WAC swimming & diving championships took place in San Antonio from 1996-98 and again from 2000-15, and in Houston from 2016-20 and again in 2022.
Additionally, legacy institution Pan-American University hosted the Texas Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (TAIAW) swimming & diving championships in 1974 and 1975. On those teams was diver Mary Jean (Jeanny) Neilson, who earned the first women’s athletic scholarship in department history in 1975.