Katherine Chen/File

The Cal women’s swim team sent a 10-member squad to the Fresno State Bulldog Invitational over the weekend to get some early season racing practice, and coaches were pleased with the results, even though the Bears finished last out of four teams.

The No.3 Bears, with 591 points, finished behind Boise State (1,232 points), Fresno State (765.5 points) and San Jose State (751.5 points).

The Bears, coming off of victories against Oregon State (161-95) and Washington State (164-89) in the past two weekends, decided not to send the entire team to this weekend’s invitational. According to assistant coach Kristen Cunnane, coaches decided to send part of the team to Washington last weekend for a “conference-mandated” meet and decided to send the other part of the team to the Bulldog Invitational.

“A lot of thought went into thinking about what the athletes would get out of (each meet),” Cunnane said.

Cunnane also said that while she wasn’t actually at the meet over the weekend, she thought the results looked good on paper.

“It’s not about looking at times but about getting good racing under our belts and working on turns and technique,” Cunnane said. “For what we wanted to accomplish, I think it was a successful meet.”

Cal came away with two individual victories: freshman Sophia Batchelor in the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 2:02.72 and junior Camille Cheng in the 200-yard freestyle with a season-best time of 1:51.10, two-hundredths of a second ahead of a swimmer from Boise State.

Cheng said she got good feedback about the race.

“I’m pretty happy about where I am,” Cheng said. “There’s always room for improvement, but I’m not that far off from where I want to be.”

A number of swimmers placed third in their respective races: freshman Farida Osman in the 100-yard butterfly in a time of 56.59, senior Melissa Bates in the 100-yard backstroke in 1:05.61 and Batchelor in the 100-yard backstroke in 58.64. Cal’s 200-yard freestyle relay team of Osman, Bates, junior Mikkel-Ane Stipe and Cheng placed third, as did the 400-yard free relay team of Bates, Stipe, freshman Taylor Young and Cheng.

In the 50-yard freestyle, Osman finished third with a time of 23.75. In the same race, Cheng finished eighth in 24.26, and freshman Abi Speers finished 12th in 24.89.

Cheng also finished second in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 51.00, which beat the previous pool record. In the 200-yard individual medley, Bates finished fourth and Young finished fifth, about a second apart.

In the 200-yard medley relay, the Cal A team of Stipe, Bates, Osman and Cheng finished second behind the Boise State A team. The Bears’ B team — Greene, Young, Batchelor and Speers — finished sixth in the relay.

Cheng said it was nice to be in a smaller group and to “change it up a little bit.” She said the meet was not so much a tactical-type meet as it was about preparing mentally for the rest of the season.

“We’re not expected to be in top shape,” Cheng said. “People were swimming events that they don’t usually swim and swam more than they were used to.”

The full Cal team will be back competing next weekend, when Cal takes on No. 1 Florida at home.

Contact Shannon Carroll at scarroll@dailycal.org

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Andrew Kuo/File

Last year, Cal women’s swimming entered its season opener fresh off of Missy Franklin’s verbal commitment.

Now Franklin is in Berkeley as the Bears look forward to this weekend’s season opener against Oregon State.

Cal will travel to Corvallis, Ore., on Friday for its first Pac-12 meet. The last time the Bears faced the Beavers was in 2011, when the Bears raced Oregon State twice on consecutive days. Cal defeated the Beavers, 168-85, on the first day and won 13 of 14 races the next.

With the best recruiting class in the country, Cal should have no problem replicating these results. Ten freshmen,  including Franklin, Celina Li, Kristen Vredeveld and Marina Garcia, will swim in their first college dual meet Friday.

In Cal’s first competition last Friday, the Cal Poly Queen of the Pool meet, Li had a strong showing and edged Franklin by one-tenth of a second to be crowned Queen of the Pool. Li won the 100 fly, the 100 breast and the 100 IM to win the title. And Li was not the only one who did well: The Bears swept the top 16 spots in the meet.

Li and Franklin will lead the Bears into the conference along with sophomores Elizabeth Pelton and 2012’s Queen of the Pool Rachel Bootsma. An American record holder in the 200 back, Pelton finished third at Cal Poly, one spot ahead of Bootsma.

With such an impressive collection of swimmers, the Bears will be close to unstoppable this weekend.

There are, however, a few glimmers of hope for the Beavers against Cal’s stacked lineup.

Sophomore Sammy Harrison qualified for the NCAA Championships as a freshman in both the 1650 free and 500 free and placed 31st in the 1650 and 43rd in the 500 free. Harrison also holds the Oregon State records in the 1650 free and the 1000 free.

Harrison’s expertise in long-distance freestyle events is valuable to the Beavers. The backstroke-heavy Bears showed some vulnerability in their freestyle events last season. Although Franklin likely will focus on some freestyle sprints at Berkeley, the longer freestyle events are still points of weakness.

Harrison’s teammate senior Crystal Kibby will also be a strong competitor for the Beavers. Last time Cal faced Oregon State, Kibby was a major part of the Beavers’ effort. Kibby was part of the Oregon State 200 medley relay that came in second behind Cal. She also finished second behind Caitlin Leverenz in the 400 IM and second in the 200 breast. With the end of Leverenz’s collegiate swimming career, the breaststroke events may prove to be another point of weakness for the Bears, so Kibby may have her opportunity to take some points.

As the Bears go into their first dual meet, however, victory is likely. But the greater value for Cal is not in winning the dual meet but in being able to gauge its strengths and weaknesses through Friday’s contest.

The preseason is largely used as preparation for the regular season, which is all part of the Bears’ training for the championship stretch of the season. Because of this, the most important function of this weekend is to allow the freshmen to continue to adjust to the higher level of swimming and to the Bears’ team dynamic.

Jessica Lim covers women’s swimming. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org.

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Kore Chan/Staff

Missile Missy has landed.

As Cal women’s swimming enters the fall season, the Bears will welcome four-time Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin and seven other freshmen to the team.

Franklin is fresh off a record- setting performance at the 2013 World Championships in Barcelona. With six gold medals, she set the record for the most gold medals won by a female swimmer at a single world championship. Her performance at the world championships showed that the freshman is not entering a slump after the 2012 London Olympics.

“You hear about the post-Olympic slump, so I was really nervous, and I worked really hard this year to prevent that from happening,” Franklin said in a press conference Wednesday.

With the nation’s best recruiting class, Cal will use this upcoming fall season to create a team dynamic on a foundation of trust in preparation for the busier and more important spring season.

The fall season begins on Sept. 20 with the Cal Poly Queen of the Pool meet, but for the first few months of competition, the team’s focus is on building a supportive team environment.

“Even if you have the same people, they’re in a different place, I’m in a different place, there’s different challenges and opportunities, and we need time and space to build a team,” head coach Teri McKeever said. “This team is an amazing team with incredible women.”

Franklin is not the only swimmer making the incoming freshmen the best recruiting class.

In addition to Franklin, Cal increases its depth with Celina Li (finished sixth in the 200 IM Olympic Trials and the top butterflier in the incoming class), Kristen Vredeveld (a freestyle sprinter who held the 15-16 National Age Group Record) and Sophia Batchelor of New Zealand (holds the national record in the 100 fly).

Marina Garcia Urzainqi of Spain is McKeever’s latest addition to the freshman class with a faster breaststroke time than any current NCAA swimmer. Urzainqi will replace the vacancy in breaststroke events left by the end of Olympian Caitlin Leverenz’s eligibility for collegiate racing.

This freshman class is joining a talented group of veterans. Sophomore Elizabeth Pelton, who was Swimmer of the Meet at the 2013 NCAA championships, holds the American record in the 200 back. Pelton’s classmate Rachel Bootsma was the NCAA champion in the 100 back and senior Cindy Tran was a major contributor to Cal’s most recent NCAA championships with two individual NCAA titles and four relay titles.

With all of the Bears’ star power, McKeever certainly has the pieces for an NCAA champion team.

But right now, the NCAA championships are a long ways off, and Cal is focused on building a team atmosphere instead of focusing on NCAAs.

And for Franklin, a team is exactly what she wants after giving up the prospect of earning millions in endorsements in favor of a collegiate career.

“Missy came out in January for parents weekend,” McKeever said. She was swimming in the morning, doing her own workout and she looked over and says ‘I can’t believe I’m in the Cal pool — it has been my dream to swim here.’” McKeever said.

“And I start laughing and say ‘Yeah, my dream too.’ ”

Jessica Lim covers women’s swim. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org.

The post Missy Franklin leads Cal women’s swimming into fall season appeared first on The Daily Californian.

JD Lasica/Courtesy

18-year-old swimming phenom Missy Franklin is quickly taking over as the face of Team USA after superstar Michael Phelps retired last year.

The future Cal women’s swimmer, who burst onto the international swimming scene after posting four gold-medal wins at the 2012 London Olympics, recently garnered the title of most decorated female swimmer in the history of any world championships with six gold medals.

After competing for nearly a week at the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona, Spain, Franklin topped off her incredible showing at the 2013 FINA World Championships with a final win in the women’s 400-meter medley relay on Sunday.

Swimming the leadoff leg for Team USA in her last event on Sunday, Franklin gave the United States a slight lead in the backstroke while her teammates, including Cal alums Jessica Hardy and Dana Vollmer, comfortably finished off the race with a winning time of three minutes and 53.23 seconds. Team USA breezed by runner-up Australia by nearly two seconds and third-place Russia by more than three.

Earlier in the competition, Franklin and Cal alumna Natalie Coughlin led Team USA to the gold in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay — narrowly edging out the second-place Australian team by only 0.12 seconds.

After once again claiming gold in the 100 back, the teenage swimming star opted out of the 50-meter backstroke semifinals on the fourth day to focus on the 200 free — one of the events Franklin did not medal in at the 2012 Olympics.

Her decision to concentrate on the 200 free paid off, as the incoming Bear edged world-record holder Federica Pellegrini of Italy to take home her third gold.

“If I had made finals (in the 50 back), it would have also been before the (4×200-free) relay tomorrow night,” Franklin said after choosing to withdraw from the 50 back race. “So with it being right before this and right before the relay, we decided the risks outweighed the rewards for that race … I think I’m happy with the decision to scratch.”

On Thursday night, Australia held the lead in the 4×200-meter freestyle relay for a majority of the race. However, Franklin outswam Team Australia’s Alicia Coutts in the anchor leg of the relay to push the United States to another gold medal victory.

After posting one impressive performance after another, Franklin claimed a championship record time of 2:04.76 to capture the 200 back and add her fifth gold to her increasing medal haul.

All in all, Franklin surpassed the previous female record of five golds at a world meet, set by American Tracy Caulkins in 1978 and Australian Libby Trickett in 2007. The native of Centennial, Colo., also became the fifth swimmer ever to earn as many as six gold medals at a Worlds or an Olympics, joining an exclusive club known only to swimmers like Mark Spitz and Phelps.

“I had some really great races that I’m really proud of, and there’s still a bunch where I have a lot of room to improve,” Franklin said, according to the AP. “So I’m really excited for the next year and the year after that and all the years following those.”

We’ll see you soon at Cal, Missy.

Contact Janice Chua at jchua@dailycal.org.

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Kelly Fang/File

At the beginning of the season, the Cal women’s swimming team displayed an incredible amount of potential to defend its national championship title for the third year in a row.

Despite losing eight seniors to start the season, such as multiple-NCAA winner Liv Jensen and Olympic silver medalist Sara Isakovic, Cal revamped its team with a total of eight new freshmen who made up one of the Bears’ best recruiting classes in recent years.

But at the end of the year, the Cal squad ultimately fell to third place in the Pac-12 championship and failed to earn an NCAA three-peat with a second-place finish and a disappointing loss to No. 8 Georgia.

To give a sense of context, the Bears claimed Pac-12 championship victory for the first time last year since taking the Pac-10 title in 2009. They also garnered the NCAA crown last season for the second year in a row.

Don’t get me wrong — the women’s swimming team boasted another high-quality season this year, including wins at the Early Bird Invitational in October, the Arena Invitational in November and seven out of nine individual dual meets.

But as a team, the Bears failed to finish the season the way they wanted. They were the heavy-handed favorites as the defending national champions throughout the year, but they ultimately fell short at the end of the season.

So why did The Daily Californian rank the Bears at No. 3 in its list of the top 10 Cal sports teams?

Looking in between the lines and past the overall results, specifically at their individual performances at the Pac-12 and NCAA tournaments, we can see a definite trend in top performances by talented Cal underclassmen — indicating a bright future ahead and reminding opponents that the Bears will continue to be a threat on the national leaderboard.

In the Pac-12s, rising sophomore Elizabeth Pelton was named Swimmer of the Meet after setting an American record in the 200 back, taking the title in the 200 IM and contributing to Cal’s win in the 400 relay as the lead off.

Pelton was again named Swimmer of the Meet at the NCAAs after collecting top-five finishes in four relay events and once again breaking the record in the 200-back to take the national title.

Rising sophomore Rachel Bootsma garnered another national NCAA title for the Bears in the 100-back while star senior Caitlin Leverenz notched Cal’s third national title after edging teammate Pelton by half a second in the 200 IM.

Leverenz’s absence next year will certainly create a hole in Cal’s roster of talented veterans.

But with such a strong recruiting freshman class from this past year and with the addition of five-time Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin, the Bears won’t have anything to worry about for the next few years.

In fact, I’m wholly anticipating Cal’s return to the top in the upcoming seasons.

With the Bears equipped next year with an elite squad laden with raw star power , there’s no doubt they earned that No. 3 spot in our power rankings.

Contact Janice Chua at jchua@dailycal.org.

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Cal Communications/Courtesy

In 1975, 14-year old Mark Tran was forced out from his childhood home in Phnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge forced him, his mother and four of his nine siblings out of their family home in the Cambodian capital under the false pretense that the Americans were going to bomb Phnom Penh. The Trans grabbed the few belongings that they could carry on two bicycles for the long trek into the countryside.

Coming into power in 1975, the Khmer Rouge was responsible for the Cambodian genocide. During the Khmer Rouge’s four-year reign, approximately two million lives were taken through political executions, starvation and forced labor.

Within days of coming into power, the Khmer Rouge forced two million people into the forest to set up workforces in a new community. Tran and his family were among these people.

Survival in this environment was contingent on being invisible because opposition to the regime, even signs of intellect, was punishable by death.

Eventually, Tran was freed from the work camp when the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia and overthrew the Khmer Rouge. Tran was escorted into a refugee camp in Thailand and escorted back to Cambodia before finally moving to Canada and then settling in Westminster, Calif., in 1983.

Mark spent a few years working whatever jobs he could find once he got to America. He then briefly went back to school. In 1995, Mark and his wife Linda bought a donut shop and began a new life for themselves and their two kids, Cindy and Alex.

Mark has told his daughter, Cindy, this story before, hoping that she would approach her comfortable life in America with gratefulness while reminding her to not be satisfied with what she has but to work harder for more.

“Life (in America) is a paradise, but it doesn’t come easy,” Mark says. “You have to work for it.”

Those words made an indelible impression on Cindy as both a swimmer and a person.

Growing up in this country is far different from how we grew up, so it’s kind of like two different environments,” Mark says. “As a parent, you teach your kid the way you were brought up, and that doesn’t really work here.”

Raising kids in an “American way” was part of assimilating to American culture for Cindy’s parents, and finding the balance between Cambodian culture and American culture was delicate.

“The American culture, and especially our generation, is a lot more liberal than my parents, who are pretty reserved,” Cindy says. “We couldn’t agree to disagree. Instead of trying, I just wouldn’t talk. It sucks to have lost those years because it’s hard to make up.”

In the end, the Trans managed to assimilate and make up for lost time, and one of the ways they managed was swimming.

Like most competitive swimmers, Cindy began her swimming career with recreational swimming lessons at the age of 6.

By the age of eight, Cindy exhausted the levels that the community swimming lessons had to offer, so one of the instructors introduced her to Golden West Coast Swim Club, a small mom-and-pop- owned swim club in Southern California.

From there, club swimming became a major part of her life. The better she got, the more time swimming required.

“It seems like the deeper and deeper we got into it, there was no way out, which is a good thing,” Mark says.

Swimming became a major part of the family’s dynamics.

Cindy’s parents supported her and her brother’s swimming careers. They worked in the donut shop in the early morning, so that in the afternoons they were free to take Cindy to practices and meets.

“They would take me to every morning practice, every afternoon practice, every meet,” Cindy says. “They did everything that they could, that they needed to do (and) that swimming asked for, so I couldn’t have asked for more.”

Much of the family’s time together came from driving back and forth between practices and meets, but the amount of time and energy poured into swimming took its toll at times.

While her parents gave her the necessary resources to pursue swimming, Cindy’s decision to continue with the sport and push forward in it was entirely her own choice. When Cindy took time away from swimming in junior high, her parents did not force her to get back into it.

But ultimately Cindy had a passion for the sport.

“They were never that hard-ass kind of parent,” she says. “If anything, they were like, ‘You go to practice all the time. Take a day off, you look tired,’ but they did ingrain something in me, that at some point I would have to make some kind of sacrifice.”

Cindy’s upbringing was starkly different from her parents’. Whereas her parents lived in a hostile environment in Cambodia, Cindy had opportunities to attend school and train as an elite athlete.

These different experiences made the gap between generations a glaring truth.

As with many children of first-generation immigrants, bridging the gap between two different cultures and backgrounds within a family was a struggle.

Early on, Cindy experienced the payoffs of her commitment to swimming.

As a junior in high school, Cindy broke former Cal great Natalie Coughlin’s 15-to-16 national age-group record in the 100 backstroke. One year later, she broke Coughlin’s national high school record.

The rewards of her sacrifices and her parents’ caught the college swimming coaches’ eyes. Cindy was recruited to Cal and Texas, some of the best collegiate swimming programs in the nation. While at Cal, she won a number of individual, relay and team national titles.

Now moving into her last season with the Bears, Cindy’s mentality toward swimming and her determination to push forward and improve will continue to be a byproduct of her parents’ influences. With the knowledge of her parents’ difficult journey from Cambodia to America, Cindy knows that things could be unlike anything she could imagine.

The generational tensions between her and her parents has allowed her the independence to choose her own paths in anything from choosing swim to choosing a college.

And her parents’ support has given her the resources emotionally and physically to pursue swimming and to fully explore her talents in the sport.

“Putting (Cindy) in swimming was the best thing we ever did,” Mark says.

Jessica Lim covers women’s swim. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org.

The post Journey of Hope: Cindy Tran’s Upbringing appeared first on The Daily Californian.

Michael Gethers/File

After the second day concluded at the NCAA Championship meet on March 22, the Cal women’s swimming team found themselves on the opposite end of a familiar situation.

In 2011 and 2012, the Bears held a slim lead over the Bulldogs at the end of the second day and went on to win both national championships. But this time, Cal was the one chasing Georgia.

With one day and seven events remaining in the meet, the Bears were trailing behind Georgia in second place by only 15 points.

But on March 23, the Bulldogs pulled away from the Bears to eventually win the national title by 84 points.

In the last seven events of the NCAA meet, Georgia placed higher than Cal in six events, including winning the 400 free relay race, which was the dagger in Bears’ title hopes.

The 400 free relay not only put a final end to Cal’s three-peat hopes but added a final display of Georgia’s dominance. The Bulldogs conquered the field and edged the Bears’ NCAA record set in 2009 by four tenths of a second.

Three-time Olympic gold medalist Allison Schmitt led Georgia’s effort on the third day to accompany the 200 free national title she won earlier in the competition. Schmitt finished fifth in the 100 free to supplement teammate Megan Romano’s second-place finish and was part of the winning 400 free relay.

Georgia’s strength on the last day and throughout the meet was in the freestyle events. All three of the Bulldogs’ national titles were in freestyle events. In addition to the 200 free and 400 free relay titles, the Bulldogs took the 800 free relay.

Like the Bulldogs, the Bears collected three individual national titles from freshmen Elizabeth Pelton and Rachel Bootsma.

Pelton led Cal’s charge for the national title with a total of seven All-American honors. She was named Swimmer of the Meet after finishing second in the 200 IM and the 200 free, taking top-five finishes in the 400 medley relay and 200, 400 and 800 free relays and a national title in the 200 back.

In the race in which she won a national title, she destroyed the field by a full two seconds to break the American record that she owned.

The Bears’ other two national titles came from Rachel Bootsma’s victory in the 100 back and Leverenz’s second-straight 200 IM national title.

Leverenz kicked off the first day of the competition by defending her 200 IM national title. Leverenz edged teammate Pelton by half a second to repeat in the 200 IM.

On the second day of competition, Bootsma carried on Cal’s legacy in the 100 back with her national title, becoming the Bears’ third-straight national title-winner in the 100 back.

Despite the Bears coming up short at Pac-12s and NCAAs, the NCAA titles can be a sign for the future of swimming. With freshmen winning two of the three national titles and barely missing one more, the Bears’ future is looking bright.

Especially with the addition of five-time Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin, Cal can look forward to getting back to the top of collegiate women’ swimming over the next few years.

Jessica Lim covers women’s swim. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org.

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Kelly Fang/File

Heading into the NCAA championships at Indianapolis from Thursday to Saturday, Cal women’s swimming is facing an intriguing problem.

The Bears have the talent to claim their fourth national championship in five years, but they may suffer from having too many of their stars competing against each other.

Cal has many of its most talented athletes in overlapping events. This may make it difficult for the Bears to accumulate the high number of points for a team win.

This problem was particularly evident in Cal’s third-place finish at the Pac-12 tournament in early March. For Caitlin Leverenz, Rachel Bootsma, Elizabeth Pelton and Cindy Tran, the swimmers that consistently reap the most points, their biggest competition was often each other.

In the 100 and 200 back races during the meet, three of the top five finishers raced for Cal. The 200 IM race came down to a mere two-hundredths of a second between first-place Pelton and second-place Leverenz.

The Bears’ best events feature many of their strong swimmers, but Cal’s depth in some events leaves others lacking punch. Cal has great depth in the back and fly events but suffers in the long- and short-distance freestyle events.

The Bears’ freestylers placed high in the Pac-12s. Freshman Rachel Acker took the title in the 200 free and sophomore Kaylin Bing took third in the 50 free. But at the national level, Cal’s free times are not good enough to place individually.

Acker’s best 100 free time was 12th in the NCAA, and her best 200 free was only 11th. Bing’s best 50 free time was 16th in the nation.

The Bears’ weakness in freestyle events puts them at a disadvantage in at least five events — the 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1,650 free.

Compared to the individual free events, Cal’s chances at free relay national titles are still high. Cal’s 400 free relay is ranked second in the NCAA, and the 200 and 800 free relay are ranked in the top eight. The disparity between the free relays and individual free events can be partly attributed to top swimmers like Pelton, Bootsma and Tran swimming in the former events but not the latter.

Sporting 13 swimmers and one diver, the Bears’ bevy of NCAA-qualified swimmers allows opportunities for Cal to rack up more points. In contrast, No. 8 Georgia and No. 3 Auburn bring 17 swimmers and 13 swimmers, respectively.

Among these 13, two Cal swimmers have two top times going into the NCAAs — Pelton in the 200 IM and 200 back and Tran in the 100 back.

With Pelton, Tran and other stars, Cal is obviously talented. But the Bears have obstacles to overcome. If they can swim their top times, the NCAA championship is within reach for the Bears.

If the Bears do not walk away with the national championship, it may not be because they were not the best team in the nation. It was probably because they stacked their talents too heavily on selected events.

Jessica Lim covers women’s swim. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org.

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Kelly Fang/File

In a team of NCAA champions and experienced veterans, the Cal women’s swimming team’s freshmen were the ones to step up in last week’s Pac-12 Championships.

Last year, the Bears won the meet with six individual titles — three titles belonging to seniors, two to a junior and one to a sophomore. This year, the youngest members of the team won a vast majority of Cal’s individual titles with five of the six.

Though No. 2 Cal finished third in the Pac-12 championships on Saturday, the Bears sent a message that the freshman class will be a threat for many more years.

Freshman Elizabeth Pelton led the Bears in the effort to defend their Pac-12 title by setting an American record in the 200 back for the title.

Earlier in the competition, Pelton defeated teammate Caitlin Leverenz by two hundredths of a second in the 200 IM. Pelton was named Swimmer of the Meet for her two individual wins as well as her contribution as the lead off in the 400 free relay, the only relay race Cal won.

Her freshman teammate Bootsma also won two individual titles in the 200 fly and 100 back.

Even with this effort, the Bears were not able to come out on top in arguably one of the most talented conferences in women’s swimming. At the King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way, Wash., No. 4 Stanford upset No. 1 USC for the Pac-12 title.

Six of the nine Pac-12 teams are ranked in the top 25, three in the top five. In the four-day long competition, Cal won seven total titles.

But the Bears suffered in team points because of low diving scores and a slow start from beginning the first two days of competition. Cal ended its second day of competition in fourth place.

Like this year, the Bears won six individual titles for the Pac-12 team title in 2012. But the difference between this year and last  is the two additional relay titles Cal won last year.

Once in fourth place, there was not much room for the Bears to make up for the points lost from the first day of relays. Two individual wins is the equivalent of one relay win, so the lack of relay races in the last two days wins hurts Cal’s chances.

Despite disappointing team results, the Bears had qualifying times from many of their swimmers outside of the usual stars in Pelton, Leverenz, Rachel Bootsma and Cindy Tran.

Since team titles do not directly affect the NCAAs, the main importance of Pac-12s for Cal was to push its athletes to qualify for NCAAs.

Sophomore Kaylin Bing medaled in the 50 free with an NCAA B time. Melanie Klaren proved to be vital to Cal’s effort by racking up a total of 71 points individually with three NCAA B times. Freshman Rachael Acker also took the Pac -12 title for the 200 free with an NCAA B time.

Though the Bears finished the Pac-12 championships in third and a full 100 points behind the two leaders, the championships at least aided Cal in a different way with several additional NCAA qualifications.

Despite being unable to reach first, the Pac-12 championships overall may have helped the Bears’ chances against the Trojans and the Cardinal in their final push for the NCAA title.

Jessica Lim covers women’s swim. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org.

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Michael Gethers/File

After dropping to No. 7 earlier this month, the Cal women’s swimming team is back to a No. 2 ranking in time for the most important stretch of the season.

In the last few weeks, the top five has been experiencing some shifts. In Cal’s final dual meet against No. 4 Stanford last weekend, Cal edged the Cardinal by a close margin of 10 points on Feb. 16. Two weeks earlier, the Cardinal defeated No. 1 USC.

Though rank has no effect on NCAA championship eligibility, the Bears’ change in rank perhaps indicates the voters’ trust in the two-time NCAA champions’ ability to swim competitively within the Pac-12 and in the NCAA Championships.

The Bears will kick off the four-day Pac-12 Championships in Federal Way, Wash., on Wednesday night. In addition to USC and Stanford, Cal will race three other top-25 teams.

With the key stretch of its season under way, Cal is focused on improving its racing by picking up the pace in practices.

“We’ve been working on just getting sharper and getting ready for racing,” Cal assistant coach Kristen Cunnane said. “We’ve been concentrating on swimming at race speed and sprinting turning (and) starting instead of more cardio-paced speed.”

In addition to focusing on sprints and racing techniques during practices, the Bears will showcase their depth, exhibited specifically against Stanford, in the Pac-12s. Complementing star swimmers Caitlin Leverenz, Rachel Bootsma and Cindy Tran were junior Stephanie Au and freshmen Kelly Naze and Rachael Acker.

Coming off its last win against the Cardinal, Cal (7-2) will defend its Pac-12 title against some of its toughest competitors from the dual meets. Cal will compete against USC and No. 6 Arizona, which both defeated the Bears, again during Pac-12s.

Cal’s depth and speed were not evident in the first dual meet of the season, a 168.5-112.5 loss to Arizona. A week later, the Bears had a close 10-point loss to No. 1 USC.

As the 2008 NCAA champion, Arizona is consistently a strong competitor despite currently hovering outside the top-five rankings. Arizona’s five-time All-American Ellyn Baumgardner has the third-fastest NCAA time in the 100 breast. Junior Margo Geer also holds the fastest time for the 50 free in the NCAA this season.

The Trojans have not fallen from their top ranking in the NCAAs. USC’s Haley Anderson, the first American to medal in the marathon swim in the Olympics, will likely dominate the longer-distance events.

The Pac-12 Championships is the last time this season that the Bears will race as a full team, because competing in the NCAAs is contingent on qualifying times. Pac-12s are also the last opportunity for Cal players to reach NCAA-caliber times.

Cal, however, is still not making winning Pac-12 its top priority. The Bears are just focused on constantly improving until the NCAAs.

“Our goal as a team is to go to the Pac-12 meet and perform our best whether we win or not — we just walk away knowing we did our best,” Cunnane said.

Jessica Lim covers women’s swim. Contact her at jlim@dailycal.org.

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