STANFORD, Calif. — A new season, with a new fall league, began Friday night for Stanford men’s swimming in front of a packed house of over 2,000 fans at Avery Aquatics Center, the largest NCAA regular-season swimming crowd in a decade. CSL Match 3 set the stage for some incredible drama between the top programs in the country, and on the final relay event of the night, Stanford surpassed California to claim a seemingly improbable victory.
Scoring in CSL events is combined, with schools earning points based on how the men’s and women’s teams perform. The most points are earned in the skins and super skins events, which are elimination-style races in which points are doubled. All night long, California held an advantage anywhere between 30 and 70 points over Stanford.
Stanford closed in on California in the super skins when the Stanford women won and earned jackpot points thanks to a disqualification from Ohio State. That left just five points separating the two programs heading into the final super skins event of the night.
The Stanford men then hit the pool for the 200 medley relay, needing to advance to the finals to have even a chance at a comeback win. They did that, but still trailed by nearly 30 points in the fourth round of the relay, and were facing California head-to-head. The only way Stanford could get enough points to win would be for California to have a disqualification on their last relay swim of the night.
That’s exactly what happened.
On the second leg of the Golden Bears’ relay, NCAA champion Yamato Okadome left early, resulting in a disqualification. Stanford then earned points for first and California’s second-place points to erase its deficit and win, scoring 550 at the end of the night compared to California’s 543.5.
The night got off to an incredible start for the Cardinal when Ethan Ekk scored 12 points by winning the 200 back. He led wire-to-wire and earned the first jackpot of the night, where a victory by a certain margin adds those swimmers’ scores to your tally. Ekk was lightning fast to begin the year, posting a 1:39.20 in his first swim of the season, which is over four seconds faster than his first 200 back swim of 2025.
Stanford’s only other individual win of the evening came from freshman Sander Sorensen, who was hyped up all race long during the 100 free and delivered with a time of 42.83, pulling ahead of Auburn’s Mike Rice by 0.12 for the win. Sorensen became the first Norwegian ever to swim the 100m in under 49 seconds, but that was in long course meters compared to the short course yards used at the collegiate level.
That final relay team came up clutch for the Cardinal, with Ekk posting lightning-fast splits in the backstroke portion as the opening leg. Daniel Li, Ethan Harrington, and Jonathan Tan rounded out Stanford’s 200 medley relay team, all giving Stanford a chance for its remarkable comeback.
Li, in particular, was in the pool a lot. The first skins event of the evening was swum with the breaststroke, and Li advanced to the finals in that, meaning he competed in the 50 breast four consecutive times. That came in addition to the 100 and 200 breast.
Stanford will send a small contingent of swimmers to Stockton on Saturday to compete in the PAC Invite, hosted by the University of the Pacific. The Cardinal will then head to Walnut, Calif., for its second regular-season CSL match on Friday, Oct. 16, looking to clinch a spot in the CSL postseason.
Final Team Scores
- Stanford – 550
- California – 543.5
- Auburn – 371.5
- Ohio State - 255