Nearly 11 months have elapsed since Stanford finished third in the 2020 Pac-12 championships. No. 11 men’s swimming (1-0, 0-0 Pac-12) finally took to the pool in its first and only regular season meet at Avery Aquatics Center, defeating the University of the Pacific (0-1, 0-0 MPSF) 171-66.
The Cardinal finished first in all 14 swimming events. No diving events were held this meet.
The all-freshman team of Jonathan Affeld on backstroke, Ethan Dang on breaststroke, Ethan Hu on butterfly and Luke Maurer on freestyle kicked off the Cardinal’s meet with a victory in the 200-yard medley with a time of 1:26.95.
Affeld utilized his prowess on other strokes in butterfly and freestyle to claim an individual victory in the 100-yard butterfly and to lead off the Cardinal as the opening leg in the 400-yard freestyle relay in its 12-second win.
Dang prevailed in the 100-yard breaststroke, clocking in at 53.50. Junior Daniel Roy won the other individual breaststroke event in the 200-yard breaststroke, finishing 1.77 seconds ahead of Dang in 1:53.09.
Maurer and junior Mason Gonzalez traded first and second place in the 50-yard and 100-yard freestyle. Maurer out-touched Gonzalez by 0.23 seconds to emerge victorious in the 50-yard freestyle, while Gonzalez out-touched Maurer by 0.31 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle.
Sophomore Will Tarvestad finished almost six seconds ahead of Pacific’s David Noyes to top the podium in the 200-yard freestyle. Senior Grant Shoults claimed victory in the 500-yard freestyle, finishing nearly 20 seconds ahead of fellow senior Nicholas Sweetser. Sweetser won the 1000-yard freestyle by almost the same amount of time as Shoults.
Senior Alex Liang earned individuals victories in two 200-yard events, the individual medley and the butterfly. Sophomore Shane Blinkman and junior Alex Boratto came in first place in the 200-yard backstroke and the 100-yard backstroke, respectively.
On Feb. 24, men’s diving will head to Tucson to compete in the Pac-12 Diving championships for its first competition since last March. Four days later, men’s swimming will go down to Houston to look to reclaim its first Pac-12 championship since 2017.
Contact Jordan John Lee at jjslee22 ‘at’ stanford.edu.