ST. GEORGE — Shawn King is coming home.
The Utah Tech alum and former athlete in the swimming program, King has been named head coach of the women’s swim team, Utah Tech Athletic Director Ken Beazer announced.
“This is so exciting, it’s kind of a dream honestly because I wanted to be here,” King said in a Utah Tech Athletics media release.
After leading the Desert Hills High School swim team to three consecutive boys championships and back-to-back girls 4A state titles, King was named Utah High School Activities Association Coach of the Year three times.
Most recently King was an assistant coach at BYU for the past two seasons.
“I was so excited to be able to start my [collegiate coaching] career here, and now to be able to continue in the head coaching capacity is everything I’ve wanted – it’s great,” King added.
This past season, Utah Tech raced to a fourth-place team at the 2023 Western Athletic Conference championship meet, which was the best overall finish at any conference meet in program history.
The Trailblazers, who scored a program-best 462 points at the WAC meet, wound up with 10 total medals over the four days of competition, which included the four gold medals, far and away the highest medal total in program history, along with several more top-10 individual and relay finishes.
“Our expectations are to pick up where the team has been and advance it, make it better and continue to build upon what (former Utah Tech head coach Dan Kesler) did before,” King added.
“I think Coach Kesler did an awesome job making Utah Tech Swimming relevant, building it into something that was a powerhouse competing in the Western Athletic Conference,” King said. “We want to continue to build on that.”
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