On Saturday, Jan. 3, UC San Diego swimming hosted non-conference opponents Tulane, UCLA, and Wisconsin at the Canyonview Aquatic Center. The women’s team competed in a quad meet against all three teams, while the men’s team faced only Wisconsin.
The meet was the Tritons’ first competition since the Trailblazer Invitational in Utah from Nov. 19-22, where the women’s team took second and the men’s team won.
With both the men’s and women’s teams facing Power Four schools, the Tritons had their work cut out for them. The women’s team ultimately came in third, amassing 44 points. UCSD trailed Wisconsin, which had 117 points, and UCLA with 100 points; Tulane only managed to earn 1 point. The men’s team lost 175.5-86.5 to Wisconsin.
“This is [the] final preparation going into the final stretch — preparing us for conference and nationals,” head coach Marko Djordjevic said to The UCSD Guardian in a postmeet interview. “[Having] Wisconsin down here as a Power Four school as well [as] UCLA as [a] powerful program is an amazing opportunity for our scholar-athletes to learn and be challenged [at] the next level.”
Of the 14 events the women’s team competed in, UCSD only won one of them. Senior Chloe Braun took first place in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:00.63, only 0.05 seconds ahead of second place and 1.54 seconds off her personal record of 59.09.
“Wisconsin and UCLA are really fast teams, so the time wasn’t what I really wanted,” Braun said to The Guardian. “I wanted to be a bit faster, but seeing that [result] compared to those teams who are super competitive was really nice.”
The men’s team had a similar result, also winning only one out of 14 events. Sophomore Hunter Cehelnik won the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 47.05. Cehelnik also took second place in the 100-yard freestyle, clocking a time of 43.94 — only 0.01 seconds off from first place.
“I was expecting that,” Cehelnik said to The Guardian. “We have a lot of potential, and we’re not even ‘here’ yet. We have four more weeks left, so this season’s going to be exciting. It’s crazy that we’re going to end it out in four weeks. Well, five because we’re planning on NCAAs.”
Prior to Wednesday’s meet, the Tritons went nearly a month and a half without competing. Kicking things off with a meet against powerhouses such as Wisconsin and UCLA may seem jarring to some swimmers, but the Tritons took it as an opportunity to experience swimming against the elites, an exciting warm-up for their final few weeks before the Big West Championships, which take place in Houston from Feb. 11-14.
“The last three weeks have been really, really intense with winter training,” Braun said. “It was a lot of swimming. No rest, it was just swimming, so we were very tired, but we were really happy because we were able to push through and finish on a good result.”
The next five weeks will be busy — the men’s team will compete in four meets and the women’s team will compete in three, all before February rolls around.
As UCSD approaches the postseason, Cehelnik compared the team’s performance to last year.
“Our mid-season times and where we are [now] was like where we were last year at [the] conference,” he said. “So, the fact that we did that at mid-season, and here we are doing more grinding, more hard work, it’s exciting to see what we’re going to do.”
On Friday, Jan. 9, the Tritons will compete against USC and UNLV in Los Angeles. Their next home meet will be on Jan. 16 when the men’s team will take on Stanford.
