Despite the fact that it is held only about 20 miles from UCLA, the A3 Performance Invitational will serve as a traveling experience for the UCLA swim team this weekend.
The swimmers will make the trip to Monterey Park, California, on Thursday to participate in the three-day meet. There, they will face off against 10 other teams in the pool at East Los Angeles College.
“We’re staying in a hotel, we’re eating in a hotel,” said coach Cyndi Gallagher. “We’re doing the same stuff that we’re going to do at Pac-12s and NCAAs. It’s a total rehearsal except we’re not on a plane anywhere.”
The meet will mirror the format of the three-day championships that take place at the end of season, with preliminaries and finals each day.
“They’ll be more prepared, more experienced for NCAAs and Pac-12s,” Gallagher said.
While some members of the team have participated in this invitational multiple times, others, such as freshmen Isabella Goldsmith, Kenisha Liu and Amy Okada, will make their first appearance.
“It’s the same layout as Pac-12s. I think that’s very helpful for the freshmen, just to get a feel for what a three-day meet is like,” said senior Linnea Mack. “It’s good prep as far as recovery and staying mentally leveled the whole time.”
Mack, along with junior Katie Grover and sophomores Emma Schanz and Caroline McTaggart, set the pool’s current 400-yard medley relay record last year, beating USC by a narrow margin.
“’SC showed up just for the relays that day. … It was just us and ‘SC in the middle of the pool battling it out, stroke for stroke,” Mack said. “That was a really fun race.”
In order to get her team “fired up,” Gallagher began Wednesday’s practice by showing her swimmers a video of that very race.
“I was like, ‘Here we go. This is why we train like this,’” Gallagher said. “They just beat them on the details.”
For senior Michaela Merlihan, a return to the invitational holds special significance. She will be swimming against her sister, who attends Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
“We grew up swimming the same events. … Last year was the first time she finally beat me. Huge production in the family, but I let her have the limelight, and I think she deserved it,” Merlihan said. “This year I’m going to get her back.”
The close proximity of the meet allows UCLA to get the travel experience without having to leave team members behind, as it usually would for an away meet.
“This is our real team event,” Gallagher said. “There’s a lot of energy because there’s all of us. It’s very loud.”
While Gallagher said that there is no pressure at the invitational, she still expects continuous improvement from her team.
“It doesn’t necessarily have to be their time, but they have to do something better,” Gallagher said.