Taking inventory 2026: How Arizona swimming and diving is trying underneath Ben Loorz

The offseason is right here for many Arizona sports activities, the 2025-26 season within the books and the 2026-27 seasons nonetheless a couple of months away.

What higher time than now to press pause and verify the heartbeat of every Wildcat program?

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Over the subsequent few weeks we’ll check out every of the UA’s males’s and girls’s athletic packages to see what form they’re in, in addition to the prospects for the close to future. We’ll break down every staff and consider the way it has carried out underneath the present teaching workers, evaluating it to the way it regarded beforehand, and assess the way it suits into the Big 12 Conference.

Next up: swimming and diving underneath Ben Loorz

How it regarded earlier than

Loorz was employed two years in the past to take over a program that had fallen on powerful instances. Arizona was one of many high swimming locations underneath longtime coach Frank Busch however slipped underneath Rick DeMont and Augie Busch. Arizona athletic director Desiree Reed-Francois had earlier expertise working with Loorz at UNLV, the place he led the Rebels to a number of convention championships. In 2025, Loorz’s first season, the Arizona women and men every completed runner-up at Big 12 Championships. Six males swimmers have been named Honorable All-Americans at NCAA Championships.

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Where issues stand now

Loorz’s second season as head coach noticed swimming and diving make marked progress. Loorz earned Big 12 Women’s Swimming Coach of the Year honors, and Dwight Dumais was named Big 12 Men’s Diving Coach of the Year. Diver Luke Hernandez was named the Big 12 Freshman of the Year. Arizona posted aggressive ends in the pool: The girls took down Texas A&M and practically defeated ASU, and the lads defeated Texas A&M and USC (who each completed within the high 25). Arizona produced All-American honorees on each the lads’s and girls’s sides.

Taking Stock 2026

The offseason offers an ideal alternative to guage every of Arizona’s athletic packages underneath its present management. Check again every day for one more sport breakdown.

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Tuesday, June 16: Men’s and girls’s observe and subject

Sunday, May 31: Football

Monday, June 1: Volleyball

Tuesday, June 2: Soccer

Wednesday, June 3: Triathlon

Thursday, June 4: Cross country

Friday, June 5: Men’s and girls’s swimming

Saturday, June 6: Women’s basketball

Sunday, June 7: Men’s basketball

Monday, June 8: Gymnastics

Tuesday, June 9: Beach volleyball

Wednesday, June 10: Women’s golf

Thursday, June 11: Women’s tennis

Friday, June 12: Men’s tennis

Saturday, June 13: Baseball

Sunday, June 14: Softball

Monday, June 15: Men’s golf

Life within the Big 12

Arizona is comfortably the second-best program within the Big 12 behind rival ASU, which repeated as convention champions. The Sun Devils emerged as one of many sport’s high packages underneath former coach Bob Bowman and have practically maintained that success underneath Herbie Behm. Arizona isn’t going to catch as much as ASU anytime quickly, however the girls pushing the Sun Devils to the brink final season in head-to-head competitors confirmed the hole is likely to be narrowing. The Big 12 lacks a formidable depth like what Arizona confronted within the Pac-12. ASU was the one different Big 12 males’s program to be ranked, and the one faculty with a ranked girls’s program.

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One huge query

What is Arizona’s ceiling underneath Loorz? As a non-revenue sport, swimming and diving isn’t going to learn from the identify, picture and likeness period. Additionally, Loorz doesn’t have the cache as among the sport’s elite recruiters. Loorz and his workers need to grind onerous to land the forms of swimmers that would elevate Arizona right into a high program. While Loorz has demonstrated progress in his first two seasons, Arizona is much off from competing for nationwide titles. Year 3 will go a protracted methods in displaying simply how huge the hole is between and the packages it aspires to compete towards.