Hall of Fame: Colleen Lund (Costa Mesa)

Richard Dunn

As a former aquatics standout, you can see how Colleen Lund would

want to dive headfirst into something.

Lund, a multi-event swimming champion at Costa Mesa High and

school-record holder in the girls 100-yard backstroke (1:00.9), is

preparing to set sail in another direction.

A cultural anthropology major who graduated cum laude at UC Santa

Barbara in June, Lund is planning to travel abroad for about six months

beginning in November, including an extended stay in Australia, where she

hopes to secure a working vista and live for four months.

“I love traveling and I’ve always enjoyed learning about other

cultures ... I want to go to another country and live there,” said Lund,

who intends to keep her upcoming travel agenda, despite the recent

terrorist attacks on the East Coast.

London is the first stop, where she will join a friend. Then it’s

Thailand, New Zealand and Australia. When Lund arrives back in Costa

Mesa, she’ll decide at that time whether to attend graduate school or

achieve other aspects of her life.

When Lund started high school, there was no girls water polo. By the

time the swim star graduated from Costa Mesa in 1997, she was a pioneer

of sorts for the Mustangs’ inaugural team under Coach Crystal Whitmore in

the fall of 1995 (the sport has since been changed to winter).

“I liked water polo, but swimming was my love,” said Lund, whose

competitive swimming career began at age 12 on junior teams. “When I was

in water polo there, it wasn’t very organized, because there wasn’t even

a CIF (Southern Section playoff format) and it was so hard to have a

league, because other schools didn’t have teams. We played tournaments,

but there was no CIF.”

In swimming her junior year in 1996, Lund captured individual Pacific

Coast League championships in the 100 back and 50 freestyle, in which she

set a PCL record in 25.87 at the league preliminaries.

“But somebody broke it real fast,” Lund said. “I think it was broken

the following week at the league finals.”

At the PCL Finals, Lund also swam on two winning relays, the 200 free

and 400 free. One relay placed sixth at the CIF Division III Finals.

Lund, whose 1:00.9 in the 100 back has held up for five years as the

Costa Mesa record, also won the PCL title in that event her senior year

in ‘97, and grabbed runner-up finishes in the 50 free and two relays.

The night of the CIF Division III Finals for Lund and her teammates in

1997 was the same as the school’s prom. Lund had a race scheduled as late

as 10 p.m. “I was itching to get out of there,” she said. “Luckily my

date was a swimmer and water polo player.”

From Costa Mesa, Lund attended Orange Coast College, then UC Santa

Barbara. At OCC, where Lund grew up swimming and has also worked as an

assistant swim club coach, her competitive aquatics career came to an end

for a variety of reasons, including wanting to save money to buy a car.

“I quit the team,” she said. “But I have no regrets. Sometimes I

wonder how far I could’ve gone. I don’t know. Other things were just more

important to me at that time.

“I really don’t know (what the future holds). Hopefully, it will dawn

on me.”

Lund, who surprised a lot of people with her PCL victories in 1996,

including herself, is the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall

of Fame.