University of British Columbia Athletics

UBC’s swim teams of this era – the aptly named “Decade of Dominance” - won 10 consecutive men’s and women’s CIS (now U SPORTS) Championships and produced 42 international competitors, including Olympians Brian Johns and Kelly Stefanyshyn. The remarkable period in UBC sport history began in the fall of 1997 when some 35 athletes began classes and a year of training under the direction of head coach Tom Johnson and assistant coach Randy Bennett. Six months later they travelled to Sherbrooke, Quebec and captured the first of ten consecutive CIS Championship banners, with the men’s team amassing 660 points to claim a 223-point victory over the second-place Calgary Dinos. The final dual championship performance occurred in 2007 at Dalhousie University in Halifax, with the men’s team finishing with a CIS record-breaking 787.5 points.
 
There were countless highlights between, including both teams winning by the widest margins of victory in CIS history in 2006 at Laval University, and Brian Johns competing in 34 CIS career races and winning an unprecedented 33 gold medals and one silver. His CIS wins included a world short-course record of 4:02.72 set in 2003 in 400-metre medley. 1999 Pan Am Games gold medalist Kelly Stefanyshyn led UBC’s women’s team within this same period, winning a total of 31 CIS medals (18 gold, 12 silver and one bronze).
 
The 42 international competitors who emerged from these teams, which included 13 Olympians, won a combined total of 109 medals in international competition. Johns and Brent Hayden both made three Olympic appearances, with Hayden winning a bronze medal in 100-metre freestyle in London in 2012. Hayden led in the overall international medal count from this period with 20, while two-time Olympian and current UBC Sports Hall of Fame member Jessica Deglau led all female competitors with 18. Backstroke specialist Mark Versfeld, who was inducted into the UBC Sports Hall of Fame in the Athlete category last year, won a total of 11 international medals, including two gold and one bronze in the 1998 Commonwealth Games.