The Stanford Cardinal are nothing if not versatile, and it appears as that many of the qualifying members of the women’s NCAA Championship team will be shifting their events from the Pac-12 Championships to NCAAs.
See the pre-selection entry lists here.
Among the swimmers making a shift is freshman Taylor Ruck. At Pac-12s, she swam the 100 back, 200 back, and 50 free. At NCAAs, she’ll be dropping the 50 free in favor of the 200 free. That means that she’ll have an individual event double on the 3rd day of the NCAA Championship meet with the 200 free, an event break, and then the 200 back.
At Pac-12s, she anchored Stanford’s 200 medley relay, splitting 20.57 on the freestyle leg. If she were to do the same at NCAAs, that would give her 6 swims on that day, though the Cardinal are probably deep enough to use someone else on the prelims relay even if they opt for Ruck in finals.
Ruck’s Seeds:
- 200 free, 5th – 1:42.80
- 100 back, 4th – 50.52
- 200 back, 2nd – 1:48.67
Ruck is the defending Commonwealth Games Champion in the 200 free.
The 2019 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship Meet will run from March 20th-23rd in Austin, Texas. The Stanford Cardinal are the two-time defending champions, winning by 220 points last season.
Day 3 200 back, after all the relays and individual swims up to that point, is brutal on the legs. Murphy’s 1:36 on day 3 was epic because of that. So props to her if she can pull it off.
I think they need her on the medley relay in prelims to guarantee an A final place. Look how tightly stacked the teams are around the 8th place spot. Possible that they barely qualify top 8 and just sub in the B squad for the points.
Why is this so crazy… Mclaughlin has been doing the 200 free 100 fly double and relays as well as other swimmers having doubles
MacNeil will continue to do the 1fly, 1bk double and the relay
Yes! Also, all the 1fly/1bk doubles. Day 3 triples are really not that uncommon…
It’s not that it’s crazy. Doubles plus relay is pretty common and Ruck’s done a fair bit of it – successfully, too – through World Juniors and even this year at Stanford. It’s just that SwimSwam has noticed that Taylor has a large and vocal fan base, so they do a write-up on everything she does.
Imo Swimswam has noticed that she is one of the most talented younger (I could take out younger and just say talented) swimmers on the planet and therefore is doing a write-up for anything swim related that is noteworthy… And rightfully so.
Frank – that’s incorrect. Taylor has about 6 events that she could place top 5 in at NCAAs, so fans of college swimming will be interested in knowing which 3 she chose. So much interest, that there have been several discussions (both among Stanford fans and non-Stanford fans) in the comments section discussing what she would swim. That’s why we wrote it. Don’t like it? We’ve put out tons of other content that I hope will be of interest to you. If not, then c’est la vie.
And, seriously, six events? 50/100/200 Free, 1 & 2 Back… what else? She swam the 500 Free a couple of times but I don’t think her best time was any better than Top 20. Don’t think she swam an IM in conference this year….
She cant fully taper for this meet she has Canadian Trials in early April. This will be her conference meet taper. Look at her 50 swim flat start last week she couldnt break 22. Post Tokyo I bet Meehan has her do the sprints if she wants to.
She can and most likely will taper because Stanford is paying for her education through athletic scholarships. It’s a problem that many Canadian athletes face and almost seems to be purposeful at times to punish athletes that chose to attend American schools
Interesting comment. Do you really think that Canada Swimming doesn’t want their kids in the US for school?
absolutely
Keep on truckin’!
wow the ncaa system really doesn’t favor mid d backstroke/freestyle combos huh
Man, she was left with a tough choice: which would be a more tough double? The 200 Free-100 Back or the 200 Back-100 Free?
I think 2 back 1 free would be harder, they are back-to-back, and 200 back is an absolute assault on your legs. 2 free and 1 back at least have 100 breast between them. Still an extremely tough double, especially at NCAAs when you need to attack both in the morning and can’t save yourself at all in prelims.
Completely agree if 200 back and 100 free are back.to back. Rough schedule for Ruck..
In general, difficult choice between 100 back and 100 free as third individual event for Ruck..; considering that tough double (for individual events) on the last day, perhaps swimming the 100 free could be more successful.
Still a tough double with 100 free and 200 back. I think 100 free is far more loaded and she has a better chance to finish at least 2nd in the 200 back. I think because she is a freshman adjusting to college, we havent seen mind-blowing times from her yet. So we forget that she is one of the most gifted swimmers on the planet. I think she could remind us in a couple weeks.
I well remind that Ruck has a huge potential, not only in LC but also in SC (metres), showed last season (when she trained under Titley’s guidance at HPC, in Canada), in many meetings.
Obviously her first year in college is a major change and, like you write, in a couple of weeks we’ll see if she’s already stellar or just great..