Pat Ota has been named head coach of the UNLV males’s and ladies’s swimming & diving packages after the departure of Ben Loorz for the College of Arizona final month. Ota has spent the final eight seasons with the Rebels and has been serving because the interim head coach since Could.
Ota’s earlier roles at UNLV have included being affiliate head coach in addition to head assistant coach. Since coming to Las Vegas in 2016, Ota has helped lead the Scarlet & Grey to 5 convention championships, together with the boys’s crew’s fourth consecutive Western Athletic Convention title with a meet factors document this previous spring and the ladies’s squad’s 2021 Mountain West crown.
“Pat has been an element of constructing upon UNLV swimming & diving’s championship tradition for nearly a decade,” Harper stated. “He has a confirmed monitor document with convention championships and NCAA Championship qualifiers, and in addition understands the method that goes into growing nice student-athletes, each in teachers and in athletics. He’s the appropriate particular person to guide this program to continued success.”
As a member of the UNLV teaching workers, Ota has helped produce a mixed 73 WAC and MW particular person and relay champions, 35 faculty data and 6 convention data. Moreover, the Rebels have seen eight people and three relay groups qualify for the NCAA Championships, three people attain the U.S. Olympic Trials and one student-athlete (Vuk Celic) go on to compete within the Olympics throughout his time on campus.
“I’m honored to have this chance to proceed our success right here at UNLV, whereas having the boldness of the student-athletes and our administration to guide the Rebels into the long run,” stated Ota. “I wish to thank our athletics director Erick Harper and the search committee for the chance to convey my ardour for UNLV and the Las Vegas group. I’ve realized a lot from Coach (Ben) Loorz during the last eight seasons, whereas I’ve relied on the help of my spouse, Razilee, and my household. I look ahead with nice enthusiasm as I enter this subsequent stage of my teaching profession.”
Final season, the UNLV ladies completed 2nd out of 9 groups on the Mountain West Convention Championships, led partly by a convention document from senior Blanka Bokros within the 200 fly that continued a three-year win streak.
She and fellow senior Ruby Howell each certified for the NCAA Championships, although solely Bokros is listed as a fifth yr on UNLV’s roster for subsequent season.
The boys’s crew received their 4th-straight WAC title, in the meantime, and set a brand new convention factors document of 972 within the course of. That surpassed their very own 2021 document of 907 factors.
Ota’s prior teaching stops:
- 2011-2016: Fresno State ladies’s swimming & diving, assistant coach
- 2007-2011: Fresno Pacific swimming & diving, head assistant coach
Ota has had success with sprinters in every single place he has been. That features assistant with the coaching of Kasia Wasick at UNLV when she was ranked as excessive as #2 on the earth within the 50 free, and at Fresno Pacific the place he led a dash group that had 9 particular person NAIA champions.
Ota swam collegiately at UCSB from 2002-2006, serving to the crew win convention titles in 2004 and 2006. He was a three-time Large West Champion within the 100 again, the 2005 Large West Male Scholar-Athlete of the 12 months, and a 2006 NCAA Division I Nationwide Championship qualifier.
Ota graduated with a bachelor’s diploma in movie research from UC Santa Barbara in 2006 and later earned his grasp’s diploma in constructive teaching from Missouri in 2020. He and his spouse, Razilee, have a daughter, Alicia (12), two sons, Evan (8) and Theo (2), and a child woman on the way in which in July.
