On Friday, Oct. 10, and Saturday, Oct. 11, UC San Diego swimming kicked off its season on the Triton Invitational at Canyonview Aquatic Center. The Tritons completed third in each the lads’s and girls’s competitions.
The Tritons competed towards a mixture of convention and non-conference opponents: Cal and Stanford of the ACC and fellow Big West members Hawai’i and UC Santa Barbara. Stanford solely competed within the ladies’s competitors.
“It was really fun, especially because we had really fast teams like Stanford and Cal, and then we also had the fastest teams in our conference, Hawai’i and UCSB,” senior Chloe Braun stated to The UCSD Guardian after the meet.
On Friday, the competitors rapidly fell behind to the may of Cal, the winners of the day’s first seven occasions. The highlights of the session got here within the ladies’s 100-yard backstroke, the place Triton sophomore Madison O’Connell completed second with a time of 54.33. Later within the day, sophomore Hunter Cehelnik completed third within the males’s 50-yard freestyle with a time of 20.17.
Eighteen extra occasions came about on Saturday. In the ladies’s 100-yard breaststroke, Braun — who certified for the NCAA championships final yr — completed third with a time of 1:01.34. Later, within the males’s 200-yard backstroke, senior Luigi Franco completed third with a time of 1:46.69.
Following the lunch break, freshman Zachary Tower — competing in his first collegiate occasion — completed third within the males’s 1650-yard freestyle. Sophomore Charlie Franz completed 13 seconds behind Tower to take fourth. In the lads’s 200-yard breaststroke, sophomore Bekzhan Yessengeldy blazed to a second-place end with a time of two:01.44.
“We [finished] as the first team in our conference,” Braun stated. “We’re in front of Hawai’i and UCSB, so it sets us up really well, but it’s still super early.”
The Tritons return to Canyonview Aquatic Center on Saturday, Oct. 18, to face Claremont-Mudd-Scripps and Simon Fraser.