SBCC Adds Women's Swimming

SBCC Adds Women's Swimming
May 1, 2013

The newest SBCC athletic team will start practice in the Fall of 2013 with its first meet slated for the Spring of 2014. Chuckie Roth, a 14-year coaching veteran at UCSB, Temple City High and San Marcos High, was named head coach on April 17.

There figures to be plenty of talent to draw from in the Santa Barbara area, which has a proud reputation for producing top-ranked prep teams in girls' swimming and water polo.

Vaquero swim practices will be held at San Marcos High, where Roth has been the girls' water polo and swim coach since 2005. He helped start the girls' water polo program at his alma mater, Temple City High, and they won back-to-back CIF titles just a few years later (2003-04). He's transformed San Marcos from a fifth-place swim team into top contenders for the league title.

Roth is the Department Chair for Physical Education at San Marcos. In 2012, he was voted Teacher of the Year for his school and received the Distinguished Educator of the Year for Santa Barbara County.

"Chuckie is a pretty phenomenal person and we're so fortunate to have someone of his caliber in our own backyard," said SBCC athletic director Ryan Byrne. "It's pretty unique when you ask about a person and everyone you talk to says, 'That person is amazing.'

"His references are glowing and he is of the highest caliber as a coach. As a former Educator of the Year for the entire district, he really gets the total package of what student-athletes are supposed to strive for. He's an excellent fit for where we are going."

SBCC will compete in the Western State Conference, which currently has eight women's swimming programs, including Ventura and Cuesta. With the addition of SBCC and Hancock, there will 10 teams in 2014.

SBCC recently won the Aspen Award as the nation's No. 1community college. Vaquero student-athletes are twice as likely as non-student-athletes to be transfer-ready after two years and twice as likely to complete their degrees. Nearly 33 percent of all  student-athletes are on the Honor Roll with a GPA of 3.0 or higher.