As week three comes to a close, students tend to realize that midterms are quite near at hand. These dreaded assessments offer an evaluation of the progress students have made in the opening weeks of class. The members of the swim and dive team will face an equally important assessment as they face No. 8 Stanford and No. 1 Cal in Pac-12 dual meet action this weekend.
Cal is the defending NCAA champion, and recently returned to the No. 1 spot after defeating Arizona and Arizona State this past weekend. The latter opponent was also a victim of a swift Stanford team last Friday. UCLA lost to both Arizona and Arizona State last November.
The swim team is recovering from the grind of winter training and back-to-back weekend meets.
“We’re kind of past the really tough and tense training, now we’re trying to get race-ready,” swimming coach Cyndi Gallagher said. “We’re in our championship season.”
The team will be competing with every available athlete, which has not occurred since the Boise State meet at the beginning of this month. Sophomore Ting Quah is finally back in the pool after breaking her arm in an unfortunate surfing incident over Thanksgiving break, and has had to accelerate her training to catch up with her fellow teammates.
Other members of the team will have to compensate for the slight losses this weekend.
“There’s always someone who comes up and breaks out of their comfort zone; they go crazy,” Gallagher said. “If one or two people ““ even five people ““ can do it, then everyone can do it. They just have to believe that they can do it.”
The dive team will be competing against Stanford and Cal for the second time this month after the Stanford Invitational in Palo Alto.
“I think that we had a real positive experience up at Stanford and we have continued to build on that,” diving coach Tom Stebbins said.
The athletes on the diving team have also been recovering from injuries; however, the entire team will compete throughout the weekend meet.
“It’s really nice to be relatively injury-free. I don’t think we have anything that’s incredibly pressing right now,” Stebbins said. “They’re still a little nicked up, but it’s nice to be healthy and to get after it every day.”
Gallagher feels that this week’s meet will be important for determining success as the season becomes more challenging.
“It’s great preparation. This is who we’ll race against at the Pac-12 (championship) and NCAA (championship). This is the best competition we’re going to get all year,” Gallagher said. “This is an opportunity to see where we’re at, and see where we need to go.”
Junior swimmer Karoline Sanderud, who is training for her native Norway’s Olympic team, is optimistic about the upcoming meet.
“I feel like we’ve done a lot of hard practicing, and I feel like our team is ready to face some harder competition,” Sanderud said. “I’m really excited.”
As the weekend closes and the results of the meet are assessed, the Bruins will be in a position to begin training for finals in March.