Stanford women’s swimming continued its strong start to the season with another dominant showing in its season-opening dual meet schedule as the Cardinal (3-0, 2-0 Pac-12) cruised past Oregon State (0-3, 0-3) by a score of 170-88.
The Cardinal had no trouble at all dispatching the Beavers as it started the meet off with a bang with a sweep of the top three in the 4×50-yard medley relay. It went on to claim first place in 11 of the 14 events with a large chunk of the team swimming exhibitions on the final three events — the 100-yard butterfly, 200-yard individual medley (IM) and the 4×100-yard freestyle relay — which prevented the Cardinal from notching an additional first-place finish and several more top-three performances.
Senior Felicia Lee led the charge for the Cardinal with another stellar meet in which she displayed her versatility by claiming three individual first-place finishes in the 200-yard butterfly (1:58:89), the 100-yard freestyle (49:95) and the 200-yard IM (2:01:61) while also contributing to a first-place performance with a solid butterfly leg in the opening 4×50-yard medley relay. Lee was nearly untouchable in her individual victories as she finished each of her races with a very comfortable margin of victory.
Junior Katie Olsen also had a fantastic meet, affirming her place as one of the team’s breaststroke specialists with her first-place finishes in both the 100-yard and 200-yard events and a stellar breaststroke leg in the 4×50 medley relay to open the meet. In the 100-yard event, she trailed fellow Cardinal sophomore Sarah Haase through the opening 50 yards before pulling ahead convincingly in the back 50, while in the 200-yard event she took an early lead that she would never relinquish.
Along with Lee and Olsen, senior Maya DiRado, junior Annemarie Thayer, sophomore Julia Ama, freshman Tara Halsted and junior Mackenzie Stein also pocketed individual victories in the meet. Other Stanford contributors added countless other second-place and third-place finishes in the thoroughly Cardinal-dominated meet.
The only individual events that the Cardinal dropped were the long 500-yard freestyle and 1,000-yard freestyle events, for which Stanford entered mainly underclassmen to evaluate their long-distance potential before heading into any invitational meets. Both of those events were won by Oregon State’s Sammy Harrison, who was the only individual winner for the Beavers in the meet.
The Cardinal will now return to Avery Aquatic Center for its final dual meet of the fall against Wisconsin (0-2, 0-1 Big Ten) before it heads to College Station, Tex., in late November for its first invitational meet of the season against teams from all across the country at the Art Adamson Invitational.
Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dpark027 ‘at’ stanford.edu.