Down 142-122 with only two events remaining, members of the UCLA swim and dive team found themselves in a must-win situation against their rivals from USC.
To maintain a shot at victory in the final event, a Bruin would first have to prevail in the 200 individual medley.
That’s exactly what freshman Lauren Hall did. Amid deafening screams from both sides, Hall stormed through her last length of the pool to out-touch Trojan Olympian Rebecca Soni and keep the Bruins’ hopes alive.
Heading into the final race, UCLA, still down 147-136, needed both a first- and second-place finish in the 400 free relay to win.
As the swimmers took their marks, chants of “This is Bruin territory” and “Let’s go, Trojans” clashed while the intensity of the moment built.
Feeding off the home energy, one of the Bruin relays jumped out to an early lead in the first 100 yards.
But the Trojan A-relay was not about to fall to their crosstown foes in the last event for a second consecutive year.
The USC relay team seized control of the lead by the 200-yard mark and, despite a late surge from the Bruins, took the event by three-hundredths of a second. The Trojans’ event-win crushed UCLA’s attempt at a comeback and sealed their victory in the nail-biter, 158-142.
The last two races served as a microcosm for the meet as a whole: an intense battle between two teams swimming their best. It’s what swim coach Cyndi Gallagher has come to expect from the annual crosstown contest.
“It was a great meet,” Gallagher said. “USC swam awesome. To have it come down to the last relay, that’s the challenge we like. Bring it on. And (the Trojans) swam out of their minds. I give a lot of credit to them. They prepared really well for us.”
For UCLA’s part, Gallagher said she thought the team got a little too comfortable heading into the halftime break leading 77-73.
“‘SC came out ready to go, and they never let down,” Gallagher said. “I feel like we let down a little bit in the second half of the meet because we were ahead. That was the difference. You cannot let down one inch against USC.”
Up at Sunset Canyon Recreation Center, the UCLA divers put in a solid performance on 1-meter but failed to win crucial first-place points in 3-meter. Junior All-American Marisa Samaniego won the 1-meter but turned in an uncharacteristic fifth-place finish in the 3-meter.
Samaniego said she has no idea what went wrong on 3-meter.
“I just wasn’t on,” Samaniego said. “I missed my first dive and just kind of spiraled down. I probably did the worst dive I’ve done in the last couple weeks on that day. So it’s unfortunate and disappointing, but it happens. No one is perfect, everyone has a bad day, and I’d rather have it be Friday than in a week (at Pac-10 Championships).”
Dive coach Tom Stebbins said the loss illustrates how competitive the conference is top to bottom. He offered high praise for Samaniego despite the disappointing finish, calling her “one of the best competitors I’ve ever coached.”
“I’m real unhappy that we lost our area,” Stebbins said. “I don’t think that that is representative of who we are right now. But there were many good things within (the meet). Marisa literally did one good dive out of six. … On any given day, if she does three good dives, that contest is over; it’s out of reach and she can’t be caught. That’s the thing that I’m encouraged by. I think this day is an aberration.”
Like Stebbins, Gallagher took more positives out of the loss than negatives. The Bruins won five events ““ three belonging to junior Anna Poteete, and the other two being Hall’s 200 IM win and Samaniego’s 1-meter triumph. The Bruins also clocked in 17 season-best and 13 lifetime-best times.
“We were awesome,” Gallagher said. “We raced them all the way through. There were just a couple close races that we didn’t get our hands on the wall quite first.”
To Hall, who also eclipsed the NCAA B-cut in the butterfly ““ an event she does not normally swim ““ the loss certainly stung a bit more than usual. At the same time, she’s happy to have three more cracks at beating USC.
“Obviously, because of the rivalry, (the loss) hurts a little bit more.” Hall said. “But it also means that next time we want to beat them that much more. We’ll be coming at it full-force next year.”