Texas won 10 of 16 events and came from behind for the second time in as many days to finish off a 161-139 win over host California Friday afternoon at Cal’s Spieker Aquatics Center.
The win marks the Longhorns’ third in their last four meets at California and their first win in Berkeley since 2010. Texas finishes a sweep of its San Francisco Bay Area road swing after defeating Stanford on Thursday and remains unbeaten through five dual meets, all at road or neutral sites.
Cal opened with a win in the 400-yard medley relay before Texas senior Kaitlin Pawlowicz scored the Longhorns’ first win of the day and nine points by claiming the 1000 freestyle in 9 minutes, 50.26 seconds. The Golden Bears won the next two events, but UT freshman Bethany Leap halted Cal’s momentum with a win in the 100 breaststroke at 1:02.73. Sophomore Jordan Surhoff added three points with her third-place mark of 1:04.44.
Senior Kelsey LeNeave won her third butterfly race of the road trip and took the 200 butterfly in 1:59.02 while edging Cal’s Celina Li by less than two-tenths of a second. Sophomore Brynne Wong scored a win in her home state and captured the 50 freestyle in 23.19. Senior All-America diver Emma Ivory-Ganja landed her first of two wins on the day with her total of 302.63 points in the platform event, while junior Meghan Houston placed third at 290.48.
Texas trimmed the Cal lead to 105-102 by way of its one-two finish in the 200 breaststroke. Sophomore Madisyn Cox led the way in 2:14.32 while Leap followed closely behind at 2:15.50. The Longhorns took the lead for good and assumed a 115-111 cushion behind a one-two finish from LeNeave and Pawlowicz in the 500 freestyle. LeNeave scored her second win of the day in 4:50.98 for nine points, while Pawlowicz chipped in four points with her second-place time of 4:51.68.
Texas notched its third straight win and continued to pull away from Cal, as Wong took the 100 butterfly by one one-hundredth of a second in 54.08 to edge Cal’s Noemie Thomas. Ivory-Ganja finished off a sweep of the diving events and won the three-meter board with 338.85 points. Junior Kristina Hoffmann added four points with her second-place total of 319.65 points.
Cal won the next event, the 200 IM, but Texas took a 148-135 lead into the meet’s final event, the 200 freestyle relay. A win or second-place finish would have won the meet for Texas while a third-place Longhorns showing would have ended the meet in a tie. Texas led the relay from start-to-finish and cruised to victory in 1:32.29 to seal its 161-139 win.
POST-MEET COMMENTS
Texas head coach Carol Capitani
This was a great team effort, just a complete team win today, and I think I’m most proud of that today. It was rainy and cold (at Cal’s outdoor pool), and it was one of those things where the times didn’t matter. It was just about racing. Everybody did what we needed them to do. It was about doing this as a team effort and out-touching people at the wall and coming from behind to win. (Cal’s) Noemie Thomas was top-eight in the world in the 100 fly at the 2013 Worlds (Championships) and Brynne (Wong) ran her down in the last 25 yards today. We had efforts like that all around.
Someone like our diver Kristina Hoffmann - she did great and got second place. We did what we were supposed to do and what we were capable of doing. People are stating to believe in themselves. That’s the best part of coaching - when the kids start to believe and start to know they can be pretty good.
We’ve seen some great leadership from our seniors. They’re trying to lead by example and get the job done without any fuss. Our younger kids are stepping up big and learning how to race tough. People like Rebecca Millard, Bethany Leap and Mimi Schneider…they’re just getting their feet wet. But they know that it doesn’t matter what day it is…they’ve just got to swim fast. I’m really proud of all of them right now.
