Despite swimming fast at the NCAA championships, the UCLA swim and dive team was hoping for a better finish. The team placed 21st overall.
“We didn’t score as many points as we had hoped, but for the most part everyone swam faster so its hard to complain about that,” said coach Cyndi Gallagher.
According to several of the Bruins, there are many positives that can be taken from this meet. One of those positives was the performances of the relay teams.
“We had a lot of people improve their times,” Gallagher said. “We had three out of four relays score which was great – exciting to see the relays score.”
The championships featured some very strong individual performances as well. One of those was junior butterfly swimmer Noelle Tarazona. She finished 11th in the 200-meter butterfly race.
“I thought I performed well. I made it back to top 15 in the 200 fly so I was really happy with that swim. It was right on my best time,” Tarazona said.
This meet also marks the end of the season and careers for a few Bruins. The Bruins will be losing a lot of senior leaders, one of whom is senior freestyle swimmer Ting Quah.
Quah described ending her career as strange.
“It feels weird. I am done with my college career but I will still swim for my home country,” Quah said. “I think I will feel weirder when I am practicing with the team soon but will not have my class of seniors with me. College has just passed so quickly.”
While this loss of seniors will be tough to cope with, Tarazona believes that the future looks bright for UCLA swimming.
“We have a strong recruiting class coming in and I think if we can just keep the energy up then we can move up in the next few years,” Tarazona said.