Results | Pac-12 Championships Home | Psych Sheet | Event Schedule | Stanford Records
FEDERAL WAY, Wash. – It was a Stanford sweep on Thursday night as the Cardinal won all five events on Day Two of the Pac-12 Swimming and Diving Championships.
Freshman Katie Ledecky broke her American and NCAA record in the 500-yard freestyle, and junior Simone Manuel broke her school record in the 50 free. Stanford has won all seven events through the first two days and leads with 546 points. Cal is second at 490, and Arizona is third with 376.
"Today was a great day for our team," said head coach Greg Meehan. "There were a lot of really great swims from our seniors down to our freshmen. In particular, I thought Katie Drabot and Kim Williams really stood out with their swims today.
"As a program, we are in a good place," Meehan added, "but we have a lot of racing ahead of us over the next two days."
Diver Kassidy Cook set the tone for the night with a victory on the 1-meter. The Woodlands, Texas, native was tops in the preliminaries by four points. The finals were even closer, but Cook's 338.35 points bettered UCLA's Maria Polyakova's 335.75. It marked the first Pac-12 title for Cook.
Ledecky followed with another record-setting swim. She broke her own American and NCAA records in the 500 free by more than a second at 4:25.15. Her closest competitor was freshman Katie Drabot, who finished as the runner-up with the third fastest time in school history. Only Ledecky and former distance great Janet Evans have been faster than Drabot's time of 4:35.69.
Stanford had four of the eight swimmers in the A final of the 500 free as freshman Megan Byrnes posted the sixth-fastest time in program history at 4:39.14 to finish fourth, while sophomore Leah Stevens had the ninth-fastest finish in Stanford history at 4:40.79 to place seventh.
Manuel stormed to her fourth career Pac-12 title and first in the 50 free. She topped a field of Olympians with a time of 21.29. That bested her school record of 21.32 from her national title in the event in 2015.
Sophomore Ella Eastin repeated as conference champion in the 200 individual medley. Her time of 1:52.34 locked up the fourth individual Pac-12 title of her career, and sixth overall.
It was a close finish in the final race of the day. Stanford edged Cal by five-hundreths of a second in the 200-yard freestyle relay. Manuel, Lia Neal, Janet Hu and Ally Howe finished in a meet-record time of 1:26.44. That was also just .21 off the school record.
WHAT'S AHEAD
Friday features finals in the 400 IM, 100 butterfly, 200 free, 100 breast, 100 back, 400 medley relay as well as 3-meter diving. Prelims begin at 10:30 a.m., and finals begin at 6 p.m. Events will be live streamed on Pac-12.com and the Pac-12 Now app, while Saturday night's finals will air live on all seven Pac-12 Networks starting at 6:30 p.m. PT.
SOCIAL SCENE
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