The following story will refer to “ups,” “mids” and “downs.” For those unfamiliar with swimming terminology, “up” refers to a swimmer qualified for the A final (places 1-8), “mid” to a swimmer in the B final (places 9-16) and “down” to a swimmer in the C final (places 17-24).
The first day of individual racing at the Pac-12 Women’s Championships saw the Cal Golden Bears come up big in their hunt for a repeat conference title.
Cal put 9 swimmers into A finals to lead all teams – that’s an average of 3 swimmers per championship final.
In addition, Cal nabbed 15 scoring swims over three events. Leading that charge was the 200 IM, where the Bears put four into the A final and two into the B, while also sweeping the top 4 seeds with Missy Franklin, Liz Pelton, Kelly Naze and Celina Li.
Stanford runs second, basically matching Cal in mids and downs, but only getting 6 into the championship final. That includes the 50 free, where Simone Manuel leads three Cardinal swimmers in the championship heat.
That 50 looked to be the only event where another team could top Cal in A finalists, but sophomore Kristen Vredeveld won a big swim-off with USC’s Kasia Wilk for 9th, thus giving Cal 3 A finalists to match Stanford’s total.
USC sits third with 4 up and 9 total scoring swims. The Trojans sit fourth behind Arizona right now, but they have a bit more firepower heading into tonight than the Wildcats, who have 10 scoring swims but only 1 of them in the A final and 3 in the B.
UCLA should make a big move up the points tonight. They disqualified their 800 free relay last night, which accounted for major points, but they have 9 scoring swims lined up for tonight, including two up.
Team Scores After Day 1
- Cal – 128
- Stanford – 112
- Arizona – 104
- USC – 100
- Utah – 96
- Washington State – 92
- Oregon State – 88
- UCLA – 54
- Arizona State – 52
Day 2 Ups/Mids/Downs
Keep in mind that these numbers do not include 1-meter diving.
| Up | Mid | Down | |
| California | 9 | 4 | 2 |
| Stanford | 6 | 3 | 4 |
| USC | 4 | 3 | 2 |
| UCLA | 2 | 4 | 3 |
| Arizona | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| Utah | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Oregon State | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Arizona State | 0 | 3 | 3 |
| Washington State | 0 | 1 | 1 |
With diving added in, I presume Stanford will keep it fairly close.