Since the UCLA women’s swim and dive team opened its season way back in October, its primary focus has remained the same: prepare for the postseason.
Yes, the countless dual meets and invitationals were important, but only insofar as those events prepared the team to compete at their best come the Pac-10 Conference Championships, NCAA Zone Meet and the NCAA Championships.
Now five months after the team kicked off its 2007-2008 campaign at home against Idaho, the team finds itself at the doorstep of the first leg of the postseason: the Pac-10 Conference Championships.
As senior Nicolette Teo put it: “It’s go time.”
“(The Pac-10 meet) is so important,” Teo said. “For those who don’t have NCAAs, this is their last meet of the season, and this is what we train all season for. For some of the seniors this is their last meet ever. … This is a big deal.”
The conference championship is surely also the team’s biggest challenge to date. Competition begins today and will last through Saturday, with afternoon and evening sessions each day. Stanford, Arizona and California are each ranked in the top 10 nationally, while Arizona State, Washington and USC all occupy the top 25.
That’s a lot of swimming and a lot of fierce competition.
“Not only is it a tough conference, but we’re pretty much recruiting the same kids,” swim coach Cyndi Gallagher said. “If they don’t go to UCLA they’re going to go somewhere on the West Coast and we’re going to have to see them for four years. So that’s kind of hard. So yes, the conference is tough, but I think that that is good. I think we embrace that challenge and it makes us better.”
This year the swimmers and divers will be competing in different locations, with the swimmers in Long Beach and the divers in Federal Way, Wash.
The UCLA divers hope they can replicate last year’s success and again win their area. But they will be challenged by a very deep Stanford team that won the two squads’ dual-meet encounter, 23.5-14.5. In addition, dive coach Tom Stebbins said that junior Tess Schofield’s wrist injury is “not 100 percent.”
Even so, Stebbins is confident that with some solid performances in the tower event, his team will be fighting for the top spot come Saturday.
“I think we’re going to be real close to taking our area,” he said. “I think that’s been a goal for us all the way along. I think that’s we’ve got a chance to at least put our swim team in a position where they will walk out of those nights knowing that we’re taken care of.”
Both the swimmers and divers began tapering this week, lowering the volume of work and cutting the strength-training aspects of their programs to rest their bodies for competition. Coming into the meet rested is especially important because only two swimmers have clocked the difficult automatic qualification times for NCAAs.
Gallagher said that normally between 10 and 12 swimmers and divers qualify for NCAAs, so it is pivotal that many of the girls on the bubble post outstanding times this week that will prolong their seasons.
Yet even with all the perceived pressure to perform at the Conference Championships, junior Anna Poteete said that the team is still doing its best to keep everything in perspective and take everything step by step.
“I take one race at a time and one pace a time,” Poteete said. “So I’m not thinking “˜I have to win.’ … It’s not about “˜We’re going to win.’ It’s about “˜What can I do for the team?'”
And both coaches are quick to point out that while Pac-10 Championships are important, the team still has two major meets left.
“It’s a huge deal in the SEC, in the Big 10 and ACC if you win your conference championship,” Gallagher said. “With the Pac-10 it’s a little different. I think we always keep our eyes on the bigger picture, which is NCAAs. … We don’t have the pomp and circumstance that some other conferences have because you can’t have a huge high. (Winning is) for pride more than anything.”
As for the prospect of winning, the team has done it twice, in 2001 and 2003.
But what about 2008?
“We’re going to go out there and try to put it all on the line and see what happens,” junior diver Marisa Samaniego said. “If it happens great. I believe in us as a team, and I believe it can happen.”