Monday, November 9, 1998
Swimmers, divers pleased with powerful performance
RECAP: UCSD defeated by large margin; UCLA happy to get
experience
By Steve Kim
Daily Bruin Senior Staff
The UCLA women’s swimming and diving team defeated the UC San
Diego Tritons Saturday at the Men’s Gym pool. In fact, the Bruins
overpowered their southern opponent with an overall score of 215
points to UCSD’s 79.
Competing against a Division III team, the meet was more like a
challenge within the Bruin team than against the Tritons. Every
first place was made by either a Bruins swimmer or diver.
Freshmen displayed some speed at numerous events. Erin Thomas
started the Bruins on a positive track with a first place finish in
the 1,000-meter freestyle and Hilary Peterson followed up with a
win on the 200-meter freestyle. Nicole Beck continued the freshman
streak on the 100-meter backstroke and Samantha Schacher took the
100-meter freestyle.
Freshman Lyndee Hovespian was the double breaststroke winner,
claiming both the 100 and the 200-meter breaststroke. She improved
on her 100-meter breaststroke time by 1.5 seconds from her last
swim meet while bettering her 200-meter breaststroke time by more
than two seconds.
"I felt stronger and more in shape," Hovespian said. "We’ve been
working on a lot of technique and I’ve never done weights before,
so that’s helping too. I’m changing my stroke and getting more
endurance so I’m hoping to improve some more."
Returning Bruin swimmers also flexed their swimming muscles.
Sophomore Beth Goodwin swept the 100 and 200-meter butterfly and
the 200-meter backstroke belonged to senior Amanda Hall. Another
senior, Becky Thompson took the 500-meter freestyle and junior
Keiko Price won the 50-meter freestyle.
Price, a sprint freestyle specialist, found out she could excel
in another event, the 200-meter individual medley (IM). The
first-timer on this event touched the wall first with a time of
2:06.48.
"I’ve never raced it (IM) in a meet but I always like doing it
in practice," Price said. "I went up to the coaches jokingly and
asked them, ‘What about me doing the 200-meter IM instead of the
200-meter free from now on?’ And they said no."
In fact, nearly everyone on the UCLA team swam the 200-meter IM,
a part of coach Gallagher’s experiment.
"We’ve been doing a lot of IM’s in our workouts," Gallagher
explained, "So, I think everyone should be able to swim the
200-meter IM. It’s still a race, you have go for it no matter what
event it is. And they did a good job."
The divers also had a superb showing, with UCSD entering only
two divers. While freshman Bruin Chrissie Amorosia sat out with a
dislocated elbow, her teammates swept the top three places in both
the 1 and 3-meter springboard events. Sophomore Anne Baghramian
outscored the field on both events.
"It was a good outing and everyone improved upon the first
meet," diving coach Tom Stebbins said.
Stebbins says there’s still more room to improve, especially in
dealing with the pressures of a diving meet. Having seen his team
members dive well in practice, he says it’s possible for them to
better their meet performances.
"They’re inexperienced and they don’t know how to respond to
pressure but I think they’ve done a good job starting (to) figure
things out," Stebbins said. "It just takes time."
Overall, the Bruin swimming and diving team overwhelmed the
lower-division team from San Diego. Gallagher gladly accepts the
win, but emphasizes it’s not about the opponents, but about each
athlete gaining more experience and putting in her best effort.
"It doesn’t matter who we’re racing," Gallagher said. "It’s more
important just getting up on the blocks and doing it. And we did so
much better in this meet than last meet so I expect we’ll also be
better in the next meet than this one."
Next on the Bruin agenda are the Sun Devils of Arizona State,
followed by UC Santa Barbara and the University of Arizona. Some of
these are top college teams which will pose a greater challenge in
overall team effort than UCSD. The Bruins host the aforementioned
squads this weekend.
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