There are two options a team can take amid tough competition.
Sink or swim.
And at their second Big Ten Championships, the Bruins took the latter option, earning six school records and four individual podium finishes.
No. 22 UCLA swim and dive (2-4-1, 1-1-0 Big Ten) finished seventh with 605.5 points at the Big Ten Championships in Minneapolis, which lasted Wednesday through Saturday. Senior Rosie Murphy set three school records and earned three podium finishes, continuing her season-long streak of standout performances.
“When UCLA went to the Big Ten, there were some sports that their conference got a lot easier. For us, ours got a lot tougher,” said coach Jordan Cordry. “Our performance overall – I don’t think seventh place tells much of a story – is absolutely exceptional.”
Murphy recorded a 1:54.04 in the 200-yard IM – breaking the school record she set during the preliminary round earlier in the meet – to capture second place overall. She earned another school record and second-place finish with a 1:51.52 in the 200-yard backstroke.
The Sacramento local also rounded out the podium in the 400-yard IM, setting a personal-best 4:04.08 to take home the bronze. The secret to Murphy’s success was mental preparation, she said.
“Before all my races at Big Tens, I got up on the blocks, and I said, ‘I can do this,’” Murphy said. “It’s a huge mental game during championship season.”
Senior diver Eden Cheng recorded the Bruins’ fourth podium finish, earning a 323.65 in the 10-meter dive for third place overall. Junior Molly Brascia took 11th in the 1-meter.
The Bruins picked up a pair of fourth-place finishes – and school records – in the 400-yard freestyle and 400-yard medley relays. Sophomore Claudia Yovanovich, junior Alexis Schaffer, sophomore Anna Wetteland and freshman Jada Duncan combined to finish in 3:13.02 in the 400-yard freestyle relay, and Duncan, Yovanovich, junior Sarah Bennetts and Wetteland touched the wall in 3:29.97 in the 400-yard medley relay.
Schaffer, Wetteland, Yovanovich and Duncan set another school record of 1:28.07 to place fifth in the 200-yard medley relay.
And several members of the Bruins’ record-setting relays showed up in the individual events as well.
Duncan – who cemented herself as one of the Bruins’ biggest assets in her first collegiate season – set a personal record with a 21.85 in the 50-yard freestyle to finish fifth. She took home another top-eight finish in the 100-yard butterfly, earning sixth with a 51.50.
Bennetts recorded a personal best to earn fifth in the 100-yard breaststroke with a 59.55. She went into the 200-yard breaststroke seeded fourth after setting a 2:09.86 personal record in the preliminary round but finished seventh in the finals with a 2:10.47.
Yovanovich recorded a 51.37 in the 100-yard backstroke for a fourth-place finish, nearly matching the personal-best time of 51.36 she set in the preliminary round. Senior Fay Lustria came in seventh with a personal-best 51.54.
Qualifying Bruins will head to the NCAA Zone E Diving Championships in Flagstaff, Arizona, from March 9 to March 11 and the NCAA Championships in Atlanta from March 18 to March 21.
“This was a historic performance for UCLA in this conference and one of those meetings that raises the bar and sets a really high standard for us,” Cordry said.
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