Arizona
Taking stock 2025: How Arizona swimming and diving is looking under Ben Loorz
The offseason is here, with all of Arizona’s sports done for 2024-25 season and the 2025-26 campaigns still a little ways away.
Which makes this a great time to step back and see how all of the Wildcats’ programs are doing and how they’ve handled the move from the Pac-12 to the Big 12
Over the next few weeks we’ll take a look at each of the UA’s men’s and women’s athletic programs to see what shape they’re in and what prospects they have for the near future. We’ll break down each team and evaluate how it is performing under its current coaching staff, looking at the state of the program before he/she arrived and comparing it to now while also evaluating how that program fits into its new conference.
Next up: Ben Loorz’s swimming and diving team
How it looked before
Arizona athletic director Desireé Reed-Francois hired Loorz as swimming and diving head coach in May 2024 after a 7-year run by Augie Busch. Loorz took over a legacy program that had fallen off under Busch’s reign. Arizona was once a top 10 program in both men’s and women’s swimming and diving, but sunk towards the middle of the Pac-12 over the last decade plus.
Loorz arrived in Tucson from UNLV, where he guided the Rebels to a total of five conference championships in eight seasons. Given Arizona’s recent history, and Loorz’s lack of experience at the Power 5 level, it was expected that Loorz would need some time and support to get Arizona back to being nationally competitive.
Where things stand now
In Loorz’s first season, the Arizona men’s team achieved a national ranking, earned several All-American honorable mentions and finished runner-up at Big 12 Championships. The men placed 29th at NCAA Championships, a decent result that also left significant room for improvement.
The women’s team followed a similar trajectory in year one under Loorz, also producing multiple All-American honorable mentions, a runner-up finish at Big 12 Championships and a 29th place finish at NCAA Championships.
The top end talent on both the men’s and women’s teams kept Arizona competitive throughout the season, but the program’s lack of depth kept the Wildcats from securing more points at NCAAs. For Arizona to again compete in the upper echelon of the sport, it will need to send far more swimmers to NCAAs.
Big 12 vs. Pac-12
Arizona went down a notch in competition by moving to the Big 12 from the Pac-12, where schools like Stanford, Cal and USC take swimming and diving seriously. Arizona’s biggest competition in the Big 12 is, ASU, which has become a swimming powerhouse over the past decade. The Sun Devils swept the men’s and women’s Big 12 Championships this year and are heads and shoulders ahead of the rest of the conference.
Arizona’s runner-up finishes at conference championships were a positive step for the program, which had fallen towards the bottom of the Pac-12 under Busch. In the big picture, however, Arizona could have a harder time building relevancy competing in a conference that doesn’t value swimming and diving.
One big question
Will Arizona take the leap? There’s no getting around the fact that the Arizona swimming and diving teams are competing at a disadvantage compared to several years ago. Arizona was once one of the destinations for college swimmers but was usurped by rival ASU in the 2010s. Whereas the Sun Devils are regularly competing for national championships (at least on the men’s side), Arizona is looking to regain its place among the sport’s powers.
Loorz’s programs showed some real progress in his first year, with several swimmers and divers earning All-American honorable mentions. The expectations will be higher in Year 2 as Loorz has now had a full calendar year to bring in recruits and transfers, and develop returning swimmers. If the Arizona men’s and women’s teams can reach the top 25 at NCAAs, next season will be considered a step in the right direction.
A new study has ranked Arizona as one of the worst states to move to for two years in a row, largely due to what it calls a poor quality of life.
The study conducted by Consumer Affairs analyzed the best states to move to in the United States, putting Arizona at the bottom of the list.
Before Arizonans get too defensive about the Grand Canyon State, Consumer Affairs used factors such as affordability, safety, economic strength and education to measure each state, leaving out factors like entertainment, retirement benefits and other considerations that may be important to people living here.
Popular states such as California and New York also landed at the bottom of the list due to their lack of affordability, even though they both have some of the best health care and education in the nation, Consumer Affairs noted.
Here’s why the study says you shouldn’t move to Arizona. Do you agree?
Why you shouldn’t move to Arizona
Arizona ranked No. 10 out of the worst states to move to, scoring especially poorly in quality of life.
Quality of life was measured by the state’s Social Progress Index, average air quality, weather, environmental protection and number of national parks. Due to Arizona’s extreme summers and Phoenix’s consistently poor air quality, it’s easy to see why Arizona ranked No. 44 in quality of life out of 50 states, even though the Grand Canyon is one of the most popular national parks in the nation.
However, Arizona also ranked poorly in other categories, sitting at No. 42 in health care and education, No. 41 in safety and No. 34 in affordability out of 50 states.
There was one category Arizona did impressively well in, ranking No. 5 in economic strength even as one of the youngest states in the country. Still, Arizona’s economic power wasn’t enough to boost its ranking.
Top 10 worst states to move to
Arizona wasn’t alone; some of the biggest states in the country were also considered the worst states to move to in 2026.
- New Mexico
- Louisiana
- California
- Arkansas
- Oklahoma
- Nevada
- Alaska
- Mississippi
- Oregon
- Arizona
Top 10 best states to move to
- Utah
- New Hampshire
- Idaho
- Minnesota
- Massachusetts
- Maine
- North Dakota
- Pennsylvania
- Iowa
- South Dakota
PHOENIX — Arizona’s ACA marketplace enrollment fell from 363,000 to just over 255,000 in a single year — a nearly 30% decline and the third-largest annual drop in the country.
Rising premiums and expired tax credits are driving the trend, with the average benchmark plan premium in Arizona now at $532 — up 30% from 2025.
In the player above, ABC15 Data Analyst Garrett Archer takes a look inside the numbers on how healthcare premiums are impacting health insurance enrollment.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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Arizona
Arizona man pleads guilty after illegally living in forest for years among ‘1,000lbs of trash’
A man in Arizona has pleaded guilty to violating federal fire restrictions and unlawfully residing in a national forest, after authorities said he spent years living at a makeshift campsite surrounded by what officials described as “approximately 1,000 pounds of trash”.
Mark Aaron Gatz was arrested on 25 June at his illegal campsite in Arizona’s Tonto national forest, according to court records. A United States Forest Service (USFS) officer wrote in documents submitted to court that Gatz had been operating an “illegal campsite” with a “hot wood burning campfire” despite fire restrictions and that he had told investigators that he had been living in the forest for about eight years.
The officer wrote that a records check found that Gatz had previously received multiple citations and was the subject of six outstanding federal arrest warrants for earlier violations, including for building fires during fire restrictions, constructing on national forest service lands, unsanitary conditions and occupying national forest as a residence.
Gatz “said that he knew about current fire restrictions but had to have fire to eat”, authorities said. The documents show that USFS officers made contact with Gatz multiple times over the last year or so, and issued him warnings as well as a violation notice for having campfires during fire restrictions.
Notes from officers’ previous encounters with Gatz earlier this year, submitted into the court docket, state that authorities observed “trash such as clothing, pans, tools, and plastic cups scattered throughout the campsite along with a structure that was four feet in height build using wood panels”.
During an encounter with Gatz in May, officers reported observing “approximately 1,000 pounds of trash” at the site, which they said included tires, plastic bags, trash bags, aluminum cans and other items. They also wrote that they found that the campfire site had been left unattended by Gatz the previous day while still hot.
In a separate report filed by law enforcement from an encounter in February, one officer wrote that “upon arrival at the camp, I was flabbergasted by the amount of debris in the area”.
Investigators said that during that encounter, the debris consisted of three ladders, six to eight totes “overfilled with debris”, five 55-gallon drums, eight tires, multiple bicycle frames, 5 gallons of motor oil, plywood and other “miscellaneous lumber”, and they wrote that trash was scattered over approximately half an acre of Forest Service land and creating what officers described as public safety concerns.
In a separate report from July 2025, officers said they observed what they described as a “large messy campsite” while patrolling the area due to complaints “from the district office abut one large messy camp”.
“There was roughly half an acre of resources ruined due to so much trash and goods on the ground for an extended period of time,” the officer wrote.
This week, after Gatz pleaded guilty, he was sentenced to time served and three years of probation, according to court records.
A representative for Gatz did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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