MONMOUTH, Ill. — The Monmouth College faculty voted Tuesday to add women’s swimming and men’s swimming as varsity sports at the college. Monmouth, which has not fielded a varsity swimming team since 1982, plans to return to intercollegiate competition in the 2004-05 academic year.

Keith Crawford, was recently named the director of aquatics and facility coordinator of the new Huff Athletic Center, which will be formally dedicated on Oct. 25 during Homecoming weekend. He will serve as head coach of both the men’s and women’s swimming programs. A 2001 graduate of Xavier University, where he ran track and cross country for all four years, Crawford spent the past two years at DePauw University, where he served as the assistant men’s and women’s swimming coach and the assistant director of intramurals. Crawford’s nationally-ranked swim teams won the men’s and women’s Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference titles in 2003, and he coached a total of seven All-American swimmers.

“At DePauw, an outstanding liberal arts college, Keith was involved in the recruitment of student-athletes and he gained experience working in a variety of areas, especially aquatics,” said MC athletic director Dr. Terry Glasgow. “He certainly values and understands the role of athletics in higher education.”

The addition of women’s and men’s swimming means that MC is represented in all 20 varsity sports offered by the Midwest Conference. Nine of the 10 league teams now have swimming.

“As Monmouth College seeks to increase its enrollment to 1,200 students, we have seen the positive effects of the recent return of sports such as tennis and golf,” said Glasgow. “I am confident that our new swimming program in our outstanding new Huff Athletic Center will help the college attract even more high quality students, and I am confident that Keith Crawford will do an excellent job of recruiting and coaching those students.”

During the 1927-28 academic year, Monmouth College fielded its first intercollegiate team. Swimming returned in 1931-32 and the college fielded a team every year until World War II. The sport resumed in 1946 and was offered every winter through 1975. The Fighting Scots also had varsity teams in the 1978-79 and 1981-82 academic years.