Carlos Vega begins his eighth season as the Trinity College Head Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving Coach in 2021-22. Vega's teams have seen countless impressive performances in the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) Championships. In 2019-20, diver Lia Urban-Spillane '22 competed in the NCAA Division III Diving Regional Championships for the second year in a row. In 2019-20, Trinity saw its women's team go 4-6-1, set 10 new school records and added 70 new all-time, top-ten performances, while the Bantam men went 3-7 in dual meets and add 17 new all-time, top-ten performances. While 2020-21 did not include intercollegiate competition due to the pandemic, Trinity still saw its annual success in the classroom with 16 team members gracing the NESCAC All-Academic Team, and both the men's and women's squads collected CSCAA All-Scholar Team awards for the fall and spring semesters.
In 2014-15, Vega's first season in Hartford, Audrey Butler '15 became Trinity's first-ever woman to finish second in a NESCAC Championship race, while Nick Celestin '17 added a third-place finish in the 2015-16 league championship meet. In 2016-17, Vega was named as the NESCAC Men's Swimming Coach of the Year after guiding the Bantams to a best-ever, seventh-place finish and their highest point total (617) at the conference championship meet in program history. The following winter, then-rookie Samantha McStocker '21 put an exclamation mark on the 2017-18 season by becoming the first Trinity female swimmer to participate in the NCAA Championships since 1983.
Vega came to Trinity after several successful years as an assistant coach at Amherst College, Kalamazoo College, and Wellesley College, where he played a major role in the resurgence of the Blue program from 2010 to 2014. Vega is a 2003 graduate of perennial swimming powerhouse Kenyon College, where he was a 19-time all-conference selection, conference swimmer of the year twice, and an 11-time All-American honoree, and won five NCAA titles. Vega owns a bachelor's degree in economics from his alma mater and added a master's degree in sport management from the University of Massachusetts in 2004. He serves on the Trinity College Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Committee.
Vega began his coaching career as a graduate assistant at Amherst, helping them attain five NESCAC Champions, three NCAA Qualifiers, and an NCAA Champion swimmer in 2003-04. Vega helped revitalize the Kalamazoo program as an assistant coach from 2004 to 2006, recruiting and coaching eight conference champions and nine NCAA Qualifiers for the Hornets, before working from 2006 to 2009 at IMG Golf in a variety of roles. In the summer of 2010, Vega returned to the pool deck at Wellesley, and helped guide the Blue to third-place finishes in three consecutive New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Championship Meets. Wellesley produced NCAA Championship Qualifiers in 2012 and 2013 and had seven NCAA “B” cut individuals in 2013-14. Vega served as the team’s recruiting coordinator at Wellesley and had an additional responsibility as the College's coordinator of athletic operations. An assistant professor in the Trinity athletic department, Vega and his wife, Alyssa, and their daughters, Penelope and Lucy, reside in South Windsor, Conn.
