It was a successful weekend for both the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams at Avery Aquatic Center after the men’s team (2-0) cruised past the Wisconsin Badgers (0-4, 0-1 Big Ten) and the women’s team (4-0, 2-0 Pac-12) demolished its counterparts by respective scores of 175-116 and 201-85.
The Cardinal men claimed victories in 10 of the 16 events and maintained a consistent presence in the top five even for the events in which they did not win, giving them a big lead heading into the final two events. Stanford swam exhibitions in those final two events—the 400-yard individual medley (IM) and the 200-yard freestyle relay.
Unsurprisingly, Stanford’s leading swimmer for the meet was junior David Nolan, who swam the opening 50-yard butterfly leg of the 200-yard medley relay almost 0.7 seconds faster than his closest competition, securing a Cardinal victory for the event. Nolan went on to claim individual victories in the 200-yard freestyle in 1:37:60—more than a full second faster than the second place swimmer—and in the 200-yard backstroke, in which he swam a strong final 50 yards to snatch a comeback victory from Wisconsin junior Drew Teduits.
Senior Mason Shaw, along with freshman Max Williamson and sophomores Tom Kremer, Gray Umbach and Ben Lovell also contributed first-place finishes in other individual events. The divers had a successful showing, with junior Kristian Ipsen handily claiming first place in the 1-meter event by a margin of 50 points and the Cardinal claiming a sweep of the top three in the 3-meter event, as freshman Bradley Christensen impressed with his first-place finish and junior Connor Kuremsky and senior Noah Garcia rounded out the top three.
Meanwhile, the women continued their strong start to the season with an utterly dominant performance. The Cardinal emerged victorious in every event and crushed the Badger women by a margin of more than 100 points.
Senior Felicia Lee, freshman Lia Neal, senior Maya DiRado and sophomore Sarah Haase all contributed standout performances with two individual victories apiece. Lee also swam the opening legs of both of Stanford’s victories in the relay events—the 200-yard freestyle relay and 200-yard medley relay.
Junior Maddy Schaefer also contributed a standout sprinting performance in the 50-yard freestyle. Her time of 22.37 in the event marks the fastest time in the nation this season—just one-hundredth of a second faster than Ivy Martin of Wisconsin, who finished as the runner-up in the event.
The meet also marked the first competitive diving meet of the fall for the women’s diving team, which impressed by sweeping the top two spots in the 3-meter event and the top three spots in the 1-meter event, which were won by senior Stephanie Phipps and freshman Kassidy Cook, respectively.
The women will next travel to College Station, Texas, to compete in the Art Adamson Invitational hosted by Texas A&M University to wrap up the fall portion of their schedule. The invitational will offer them a chance to compete in a non-dual-meet setting for the first time this year and will allow them to measure where they stand with respect to other established programs around the nation.
The men will also head to an invitational at the end of the month—the UNLV Invitational in Las Vegas—after its final meet of the fall on Wednesday against traditional powerhouse and third-ranked Cal (3-0). The meet promises to be a tough draw for the Cardinal, as the Golden Bears have not lost a dual meet in their last 10 contests and are the defending NCAA runners-up.
The Cal meet will not be a traditional, scored dual meet between the two squads, and instead will offer each squad a chance to size up the other’s talent in a triple-distance meet format. Both teams will divide into specialty groups—sprinting freestyle, distance freestyle, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and IM—and individuals in each group will swim three races to determine a champion from each grouping.
The cross-Bay rivals will square off on Wednesday at 2 p.m. in Berkeley.
Contact Do-Hyoung Park at dpark027‘at’stanford.edu.