Before the USC swim and dive season kicked off in October, Head Coach Lea Maurer described the team as “a cake in the oven,” aiming for athletes to “have some big breakthroughs and level up a bit.” 

After offering some standout performances at both the Trojan Invitational in early October and the World Aquatics World Cup less than a week later, that cake is starting to rise. The first one-on-one tests of the cake’s integrity will be against Arizona on Friday and Arizona State on Saturday, though the Trojans are looking strong after their first two bouts.

The No. 12 women’s team fared well against No. 23 UCLA and No. 25 Texas A&M at the Trojan Invitational, beating both teams by almost 140 points, though they narrowly missed the mark against No. 9 Indiana by 28 points. As a team, the women worked well together, earning second in all of the 400-yard-and-below relays across the strokes.

Junior Minna Abraham continued to be a leader in the pool, clinching the win in the 500-yard freestyle and earning second in both the 100- and 200-yard free. Senior Claire Tuggle further secured the women’s hold over freestyle with a win in the mile, tacking on second in the 500 and fourth in the 200.

Nevertheless, the non-freestylers still made their mark, with senior Justina Kozan winning both the 200- and 400-yard individual medleys and freshman Bella Brito grabbing second in the 100-yard breaststroke as well as third in the 50-yard free.

Meanwhile, the No. 15 Trojan men were able to take down A&M by 42 points but weren’t so lucky with Indiana, losing by 162; that being said, the Chmielewski twins dominated in all but breaststroke. 

Junior Krzysztof Chmielewski set a new Uytengsu Aquatics Center record in the 200-yard butterfly, though he also kept the freestyle theme going with a second place in the 500-yard event. Fellow junior Michal Chmielewski took first in the 100-yard fly, third in the 200-yard fly and fourth in the 100-yard backstroke.

Sophomore Oliver Søgaard-Andersen, a star in the sprint to mid-distance freestyle events, finished fifth in the 50-yard free — a standout in a competitive event, with milliseconds separating rankings — and got fourth in the 100- and 200-yard free.

The divers made major waves and put their Olympic experience to use: graduate student Moritz Wesemann swept the men’s side after winning both the 1- and 3-meter events, and sophomore Kate Miller had a near sweep, winning the 3-meter and taking second place in the 1-meter for the women.

As the Trojans moved on to the World Aquatics Cup, their strengths manifested themselves clearly: distance freestyle and butterfly. 

Krzysztof Chmielewski and Abraham continued to dominate across freestyle events. Abraham Chmielewski earned sixth in the 200-meter free and ninth in the 400-meter free, while Krzysztof Chmielewski placed 11th in the 400-meter free. 

However, butterfly also set itself apart in the Trojans’ skillset. Sophomore Camden Doane placed seventh in the 200-meter fly and 23rd in the 100-meter fly, while still earning a top-15 finish in the 400-meter IM. Michal Chmielewski was the men’s non-freestyle star of the meet, earning 23rd in the 50-meter fly, eighth in the 200-meter fly and 11th in the 100-meter fly, in which he’s making his way toward a sub-minute 100 at just a little over one second off.

As the Trojans face down Arizona on Friday at 1 p.m. in Tucson and Arizona State on Saturday at 11 a.m. in Tempe, USC will continue to watch its cake fill the pan.