The No. 15 UCLA women’s swimming and diving team (3-0, 1-0 Pac-10) has been training for meets like these all year.
Fresh off of feel-good wins at the tri-meet last Friday against UC Santa Barbara and Oregon State, the team sought to capitalize on that momentum and implement it throughout practice this week in preparation for what may be season-defining meets this weekend.
The Bruins will host No. 16 Arizona State (0-2) today and the No. 4 Arizona Wildcats (1-0), the defending Pac-10 and NCAA champions, on Saturday.
The Bruins have gone through intense training to get ready for the meets this weekend.
“We’ve had a hard week of practice,” said swimming coach Cyndi Gallagher.
On Tuesday, the team went through four hours of weight training and swim practice.
“They’re tired, but that’s how you want them to look,” Gallagher said after Tuesday’s practice. “They should be able to recover by Friday. We have a resilient group.”
Perhaps the continuous rotation of captains at every meet has injected new energy into the swimmers.
This weekend, senior Erin Frizzell and sophomore Dani Milligan will lead the team into the pool.
As for the meets, the Arizona State Sun Devils have dropped close meets to Kansas, 149-147, and to Southern Methodist, 142-99.
“We have an excellent group of divers. We need to count on them a lot against ASU,” Gallagher said.
The UCLA women’s diving team has been working mainly on finding a rhythm. They did not compete the past weekend because UC Santa Barbara and Oregon State did not have diving teams.
“It’s been more about repetition over the past two weeks,” said diving coach Tom Stebbins. “It’s still early in the year, and we want to be dedicated in getting comfortable to the pieces (the divers) have.”
The Sun Devils are anchored by junior Ashton Aubry, who qualified for the NCAA Championships last year.
In March 2008, the Arizona Wildcats took the maximum number of swimmers ““ 18 ““ to NCAA competitions, where they were ultimately crowned Division I champions.
Though the Wildcats lost Lacey Nymeyer, who was a silver medalist in the 2008 Olympics, to graduation, Arizona still has enough remaining pieces to make it a top contender.
“Arizona is obviously loaded. They have a tough, tough team,” Gallagher said. “Their strengths match up with ours. We don’t need to win every race, but every point counts.”
However, Gallagher still emphasized that the team would not settle for anything less than the best.
“We still need to bring the same type of competitive spirit like we brought last week,” Gallagher said. “We need to race harder and faster.”
Diving will begin at noon at the Sunset Canyon Recreation Center today, and swimming will begin at 2 p.m. at the Men’s Gym Pool.
On Saturday, the divers will head out to the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center, where competition will begin at 11 a.m. The swimmers will take to the pool at noon at the Men’s Gym Pool.