On Saturday, Jan. 21, Stanford’s No. 2 women’s and No. 8 men’s swim teams headed to Tucson, where they faced off against the No. 17-ranked women and No. 18-ranked men of the University of Arizona. Both Stanford teams emerged victorious, with the women winning 190-104 and the men winning 170-118.
Leading the way for the women’s victory was junior Janet Hu, who placed first in three individual events and one relay to earn four victories on the day. Hu claimed the 100-yard butterfly (52.50), 100-yard backstroke (52.90) and the 200-yard backstroke (1:55.90) by herself and teamed up with Ally Howe, Heidi Poppe and Simone Manuel to take first place in the 200-yard medley relay (1:39.05). The women’s team also clinched the 200-yard freestyle relay with a team of Manuel, Howe, Lia Neal and Lindsey Engel (1:31.17).
The Cardinal were assisted by several other individual race winners, including sophomore Ella Eastin in the 200-yard butterfly (1:57.47) and the 200-yard breaststroke (2:16.82), freshman Megan Byrnes in the 1,000-yard freestyle (9:55.68) and freshman Katie Ledecky in the 500-yard freestyle (4:36.97) and 400-yard IM (4:11.74).
The women’s team rounded out the day with an impressive performance from senior diver Kassidy Cook, who won both the 1-meter springboard (300.08) and 3-meter springboard (283.58). The team improved to 5-0 on the season and 4-0 in Pac-12 divisional meets.
Meanwhile, the men’s team had an equally productive day, with victories in both the first and last relay races of the meet. Stanford’s relay team of Ryan Dudzinski, Matt Anderson, Andrew Liang and Sam Perry took first in the 200-yard medley relay (1:28.24), and its second relay team of Tom Kremer, Spencer Deshon, Liang and Perry took first in the 200-yard freestyle relay (1:21.61).
In the diving events, Bradley Christensen and Ted Miclau shared the podium, with Christensen placing first in 1-meter (345.75) and second in 3-meter (320.48) and Miclau taking first in 3-meter (362.55) while falling to second in 1-meter (308.63).
The Cardinal had a litany of individual victories throughout the day, including Abraham DeVine taking the 400-yard IM (3:55.83), True Sweetser winning the 1,000-yard freestyle (9:06.81) and the 500-yard freestyle (4:28.94) and Jimmy Yoder placing first in the 200-yard freestyle (1:39.70).
With the win, the men’s team improved to 3-0 on the season and 2-0 in Pac-12 divisional meets.
Both the women’s and men’s teams return home to Avery Aquatics Center for their next match-ups. The women take on No. 19 UCLA on Friday, Jan. 27 at 2 p.m., and the men will face off against No. 14 USC on Saturday, Feb. 4 at noon.
Contact Bobby Pragada at bpragada ‘at’ stanford.edu.