DIVING at Bruin Invitational Today and Saturday
All day Rose Bowl Aquatic Center
By Calley Prezzano
Daily Bruin Contributor
While the UCLA swim team takes a week off, the dive squad will
be competing at the Bruin Invitational at the Rose Bowl today and
tomorrow.
While the meet is a stepping-stone to the NCAA Zone E
Championships in March, it will still be a challenge for the
team.
“Obviously our biggest rival this weekend will be
USC,” said head coach Tom Stebbins, whose swimming and diving
team is ranked second in the country. “We want the bragging
rights.”
Besides being a crosstown rival, USC will present a challenge
for the team.
“USC has the best diving program of the teams we’re
up against,” Stebbins said.
USC divers Kellie Brennan, junior, and Nicci Fusaro, freshman,
are both national team members and will be good competition.
Senior Anne Baghramian agrees on USC’s ability.
“Both girls are outstanding, and this will be our first
time seeing them up on the platform,” she said.
“They’re our biggest competition.”
Also competing will be the University of Kansas, who also has
some swimmers to watch out for, including two Southern California
natives, junior Tammy Pace and freshman Catherine McCalley. Other
teams include Hawaii, UC Irvine, Connecticut, UC Davis, UCSD, USD,
Cal State Northridge, Redlands and San Jose State.
The other teams will be ready to dive well, but UCLA is not
intimidated.
“We’re putting our mark out there,” Stebbins
said. “We are a team that would like to be reckoned
with.”
Two members of the Bruin team will not dive at the invitational
because of illness. Junior Chrissie Amorosia and sophomore Regan
Gosnell haven’t practiced but may return to the pool on
Monday. Although the team will lose some depth, the divers
competing are ready for the challenge at hand.
“We’ll miss both girls, and they will miss the
ability to compete,” Stebbins said. “But we have six
girls stepping up.”
This weekend, the Bruins will work on perfecting come outs,
small tucks, and positioning. They may be fatigued now, but when it
comes to the end of the year, Stebbins knows that this hard
training will pay off.
“Things get burned into muscle memory better when
you’re tired,” he said. “By the end of the year,
we’ll be rested, both mentally and physically. We’ll
have strong, fast diving,”
Working rigorously at daily practices, the Bruins may be tired
but they’re not worried.
“We haven’t trained to peak now,” Baghramian
said. “We’re getting ourselves ready for the end of the
year.
“Right now, I’m not at my strongest, but I’m
not that worried about it.”
Next weekend, the swimmers will join with the diving team as
they head to Northern California to compete against No. 3 Stanford
on Jan. 26, and Cal the following day.
“That’ll be huge,” Baghramian said.
But for now, the Bruin Invitational is the focus for the
team.
“We’ll have to go in there and dominate,”
Baghramian said.