Coaches leaving is not new at Cal State East Bay.

In the last year, the school has seen its track, cross country, softball and men’s soccer coaches all leave for other opportunities. This trend continued last week when CSUEB swimming Head Coach Ben Loorz accepted the head job at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

“I am certainly not running away,” Loorz said. “We have an awesome lineup for next season, and whoever takes over this program is going to have a great time.”

The squad that finished in second place at the Pacific Collegiate Swim and Dive Conference championship will return 14 of 23 swimmers and lose nine seniors to graduation. It is a homecoming of sorts for Loorz, who was an assistant coach at UNLV from 2007-2010, during which the team won three consecutive Mountain West Conference championships.

“The personal capital I have in UNLV Athletics opened some doors for me,” Loorz said. “From there, the pieces fell into place. Our family is in Northern California, so this decision was incredibly hard, but in the end, it is such a unique opportunity to step up to DI Athletics, and also to coach both men and women.”

During his six-year tenure at East Bay, Loorz led his team to three second place conference finishes and qualified for the NCAA championships twice, where they finished 21st in 2013 and 15th in 2014. Under Loorz, Pioneer swimmers have broken 20 of 21 records in every event except the 100 individual medley, which was set by Julie Radecke during the 1987-1988 season.

Loorz was an assistant under UNLV longtime Head Coach Jim Reitz, who was a fixture for the Rebels for 35 years until he retired prior to the start of this past season. Bobby Folan served as the UNLV Interim Head Coach in 2015-2016, but after the season, the school decided to open the position, which eventually went to Loorz. The UNLV women finished in fourth place last season at the conference championships while the men finished tied for 23rd place at the NCAA championships in Atlanta in March.