Dominance is a word that is thrown around too often in sports. The Red Sox are referred to as the most dominant team in baseball but have only won two championships in the last 100 years. The Patriots were the most dominant team in NFL history until they couldn’t get the job done against the Giants in last years Super Bowl.

The UNCW men’s swimming and diving team represents dominance in every sense of the word.

The Seahawks just won their seventh Colonial Athletic Association championship in as many years, doing so rather handily. UNCW amassed 702 points, 116 above second place finisher Old Dominion. Freshman Kobi Salinas lifted the Seahawks by winning the 3-meter dive as well as the 1-meter dive and collected 340.60 points. The championship meet may have been rather easy for the Seahawks but their season overall was anything but.

This year has been really rewarding because this team has gone through a lot of difficulties in getting to the point where we got. We had people missing meets due to illnesses and injuries and it seemed we were never able to put a full meet together,” said 30-year head coach Dave Allen. “We just kept talking about how we needed to hang in there and have faith that things would turn around for us.”

And certainly at the start of the season UNCW did not look like one of Allen’s previous six CAA champions. The men lost four out of their first five meets and finished seventh,, fifth, and fifth respectively in their three days at the Patriot Invitational; however just as Allen preached, the team turned things around winning their final six meets and never falling bellow first in the four days at the CAA championships.

After seven straight championships, the Seahawks are a certifiable powerhouse in the CAA, yet coach Allen remains as humble as he was 30 years ago when he first stated up the program.

“We’re just lucky right now in the fact that we have been fortunate to get some good athletes who are willing to work hard. You can get someone who has a lot of talent but if they are not willing to work hard then they’re never going to realize their potential. We have individuals who want to win and are willing to work hard to accomplish that.”

This is probably Allen’s greatest attribute as a coach. He is not only able to recruit swimmers and divers who are incredible athletes, but he is able to instill in them the desire to push to be the best. Despite winning six conference championships in a row he told this year’s freshmen that a title is never guaranteed and that they are going to have to work for it.

“The new kids coming in want to be a part of the program and they want to win a championship. The freshmen always say, ‘We want a ring too, we want to get one of those rings,’ so that’s a motivating factor for them. They want to be part of a winner.”

The Seahawks had several individual accomplishments that were important to winning their seventh title. Along with Salinas’ tremendous play fellow freshman Luke Murphy finished second in the 1,650 Freestyle with a time of 15:59.71. Murphy also broke a school record in the 500-yard freestyle that had lasted for 10 years. But allen noted that it takes more than just a few great individual efforts to win a championship.

“You are going to win championships with your depth. We had a lot of depth on our team this year and it was shown in the meets. We had three divers who might have been over looked because of Kobi’s accomplishments but they all three scored points in the meet. That was huge for our team.”

The Seahawk’s seventh title in a row is a CAA becomes a CAA record, surpassing James Madison’s 6 consecutive titles; however Allen and his team will not be complacent. You can be sure that next season the slate will be wiped clean and Allen will continue recruiting and coaching as if they are no better than anyone else.

Allen now has 10 total CAA championships and when he’s running out of fingers for championship rings, Allen laughed and said, “Well I’ll have to just start counting on my toes.”