First CCCAA Swimming Championship for SMC
Over the past 43 years of community college swimming in California, six powerhouse schools have dominated women’s competition among a field of more than 100.
However, Santa Monica College (SMC) became the seventh-ever school to win a California Community College Athletic Association (3C2A) Swimming and Diving State Title this past spring, with the Corsairs dominating perennial contenders Sierra (Rocklin) and Orange Coast (Costa Mesa) at East Los Angeles College’s historic Swim Stadium.
Transformative Coaching and Leadership graduate Owen Yancher was part of Santa Monica’s winning formula, joining the State Champions as an assistant coach this past winter. The former Davis Senior High (Davis, CA) boys and girls swimming coach had worked with UCLA’s women’s swimming and diving program as a volunteer assistant prior to his time at SMC.
The 2022 alum says his time spent on the pool deck at UCLA’s Spieker Aquatics Center, coaching with the Bruins, helped prepare him for the ups and downs of SMC’s season.
“We had great weeks and we had some not-so-great weeks,” Yancher admits. “But what set us apart was that every time we finished a practice or meet where we weren’t satisfied with our performances, we came together and doubled down on our commitment to improve.”
That constant revisitation of their core goals paid dividends as the Corsair women improved drastically over their final month of the season, rebounding from a second-place finish to archrival Santa Barbara at the Western State Conference Championships en route to their eventual State Title.
“They fed off of each other’s positive energy,” Yancher says. “And that can be rare in a sport like swimming, where things can often become so individualistic.”
In the end, he says, his swimmers slowly shifted from a mindset of competing for themselves and gravitated toward racing for one another.
“Other schools at the state meet had a dozen or more swimmers on their rosters,” Yancher explains. “We only had six qualifiers.”
“We went into it with a goal of having season-best performances. And they kept rattling off one after another after another.”
By meet’s end, the SMC women had swept all five relays. They finished 38 points ahead of heavy favorite Sierra College and 77 points in front of three-time defending champion Orange Coast College.
A Northern California native, Yancher earned his bachelor’s degree in communications at UC Davis, where he minored in Coaching. In addition to his collegiate coaching stints at Santa Monica College and UCLA, he has mentored high school swimmers in Davis (Davis Senior High) and Santa Monica (New Roads School). A Level II United States Masters Swimming coach, Yancher was honored as the Sac-Joaquin Section Girls Swimming Coach of the Year in 2019 and nominated by the California Interscholastic Federation for its State Swim Coach of the Year award.
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