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At the tip of every Arizona State swimming and diving observe, the staff doesn’t go straight again to the locker room to vary and transfer on with its day. While nonetheless within the water or on the deck, staff members will congratulate one another for robust performances. A shoutout not simply to their teammates however their associates.
“Other people’s success is equally as exciting on this team than your own success,” mentioned junior butterfly and freestyle specialist Grace Lindberg. “If not, sometimes more exciting.”
And the staff has skilled loads of success. Arizona State’s swimming and diving program is without doubt one of the finest within the nation. The males’s staff has gained three consecutive convention championships, together with two within the previous Pac-12 Conference and final 12 months in its first season within the Big 12 Conference. The girls’s staff additionally gained final 12 months’s title within the Big 12.
Lindberg known as the staff’s dynamic particular due to how shut everyone seems to be. But that collides with the opposite aspect of ASU’s identification — the one which has swimmers and divers compete in opposition to their teammates for a spot in every meet.
Lindberg mentioned the staff views in-practice competitors as obligatory for the staff to attain its objectives. The success of the person helps the success of the staff.
Behm calls this time of the season the best as a result of they’re specializing in optimizing relaxation for swimmers. However, the staff nonetheless faces some challenges. The NCAA restructured its schedule for some championship races, which means they’ve to choose and select who will race particular occasions.
The staff has to ship in its occasion teams one week earlier than the NCAA Championship, so Behm has been testing completely different teams all season lengthy.
But Behm mentioned the staff’s preparation for the championship season doesn’t begin with the mid-season evaluations. It doesn’t begin at the start of the season, both. Behm mentioned the preparation course of begins when the athletes are nonetheless in highschool.
“I think it starts when the kids commit,” Behm mentioned. “Now, it’s when they’re a junior in high school, telling them it’s literally every day. Now that college sports have gotten even more competitive, it’s like you’re competing for a spot on the team and then a spot on the travel roster and all of that (every day).
“They’ve got to show up, and then it’s just raising the bar from there.”
The Big 12 championships are Feb. 24-28 with the NCAA Zone Diving Championships March September 11. The Zone Diving Championships are 5 regional meets that decide which divers will compete within the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships.
The NCAA girls’s Swimming Championships are March 18-21, and the boys’s NCAA Championships, March 25-28.
The Arizona State males’s staff gained its first nationwide title following the 2023-24 season and positioned sixth at NCAAs a 12 months in the past. With an ideal 9-0 begin to this season, the boys have excessive expectations.
“We want to perform at the highest level during Big 12s, but leading up to (the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship),” mentioned junior butterfly specialist Ilya Kharun, who’s a two-time Olympic bronze medalist. “I think it’s all just really good work all going up to the big championship season.”
The males’s excellent begin features a tri-meet win in opposition to two top-10 packages, Stanford and California, Berkeley, in late October. About a month later, the Sun Devils beat two extra top-15 packages, Virginia and Tennessee, on the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association Dual Meet Challenge.
The girls’s staff is 4-5-1 this season and has gained three meets in a row to start out 2026. The Sun Devils took down Grand Canyon in early January, gained the Big 12 West Championship meet and defeated Arizona in early February.
The girls’s staff additionally gained expertise racing in opposition to high competitors within the Dual Meet Challenge, which is able to put together them for the upcoming championship season. Lindberg mentioned she was pleased with how the staff carried out in that meet.
“The preparation to race an unranked team, versus the preparation to go to a national championship, versus the preparation to race the No. 1 team in the country, even though the meet is going to look a little bit different, it’s the same mentality every time,” Lindberg mentioned. “It’s about me and my teammates … and how we’re going to show up and just do what we know how to do.
“If we do that, we’re pretty confident that everything else is going to take care of itself.”
Tyler Bednar is a graduate scholar at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism
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