In the first half of their season, the Trojan swim and diving teams fought hard to prove themselves as worthy competitors in the NCAA this season — to varying success. 

The No. 11 women’s team (6-1, 0-1 Big Ten) proved lethal off the blocks and in the diving well, while the No. 18 men’s team (3-3, 0-1) continued to miss the gold by milliseconds, populating the podium but not quite making it to the top. In their latest bouts, this pattern proved tough to kick.

The men and women’s swim teams hosted the men (1-4) and women (3-2) of unranked UNLV and 3-0 men and 5-0 women of UCSD at Uytengsu Aquatics Center on Friday. The squads competed in a short-course meet, in which each lap measures 25 yards. They won 11 and nine of the 28 total events respectively. The divers then took to Westwood for the Bruin Diving Invitational that Friday through Sunday for a respectable showing of podium finishes.

USC swimmers clear ternary meet

The women’s win streak wasn’t the only pattern that picked up where it left off in the Trojans’ faceoff against the Rebels and the Tritons: Breaststroke and freestyle remain the program’s crown jewels. 

The men dominated in the 100 breaststroke in a 1-2-3 sweep, with junior Sanberk Oktar, sophomore Junhao Chan and freshman Stuart Timmerman all finishing within a second of each other. However, the 200 breaststroke was the women’s to lord over with a 1-2-3 of their own, thanks to sophomore Daniela Karnaugh, senior Ella Flowers and senior Katherine Adams, respectively.

Though the Trojans have proved their prowess in distance freestyle, they performed more consistently in free events than normal, featuring a healthy helping of both distance and sprint event domination for both the men and women.

Both USC squads found their way into the top three of the 1,000 free. Junior Minna Abraham and freshman Alisee Pisane waged a tight race across all 40 laps, though Abraham pulled ahead to take first while her teammate followed seconds behind her. Though the men didn’t take first, sophomore Thomas Olsen narrowly placed second while junior Ian Pickles finished third.

Freshman Raphael Sibuet took first in the 500 freestyle, but he was the only Trojan man to take the podium as opposed to the women’s team’s podium domination, populated by Pisane in first, freshman Dora Molnar in second and sophomore Lily Dormans taking third.

However, the men managed to find success in the 200 free with team-leader and junior Krzysztof Chmielewski winning the event and graduate student Filip Mujan earning second. The event represented yet another podium sweep for the Trojan women, with Dormans earning third again, sophomore Cornelia Fox stepping into second and freshman Bella Brito landing in first.

Though the men made an impressive showing in the distance events, sprint freestyle was a Trojan woman’s world. Both the A and B Trojan relay teams topped the women’s 200 freestyle relay. Graduate student Nicole Maier emerged from the A-team to swim the 50 free individually, this time outpacing Brito to win the event by a half second — a substantial stretch in a race as breakneck as the 50.

No freestyle event for the Trojans was quite as successful as the women’s 100, however. In a complete top-four shutout, senior and freestyle jack-of-all-trades Claire Tuggle took home the gold, sophomore Caelle Armijo earned second with a time close to her personal record, Brito notched yet another top-three finish in third and sophomore Julia Huffmaster completed the quartet in fourth just .03 off of her personal record of 23.30.

While USC’s breaststroke and freestyle domination was par for the course this season, the Trojans witnessed some deviations from the norm with impressive butterfly performances from the women, outstanding backstroke times from the men and top-tier medley races from both.

The women’s 100 fly left no room for UNLV or UCSD in the top three as swiss army knife senior Justina Kozan took first, Abraham grabbed the silver and Miller rounded out the podium. Junior Michal Chmielewski didn’t let the men fall out of butterfly favor completely with a win of his own in the 100, also outpacing sophomore Charlie Bufton by five full seconds in the 200 fly. Miller returned to the podium for the 200 fly, only as the second place to Flowers’ third.

Graduate student Vaggelis Makrygiannis and junior Lindsay Barnes kept the Trojans relevant in the backstroke events, with Makrygiannis sweeping both events and Barnes earning second in the 100 and winning the 200.

In the 200 individual medley, the women held four out of five of the top spots with Kozan in first while the men took first through third, earning Oktar his second win of the meet. Both the men and women took the medley relays, with the women barely out-touching UCSD’s A-team by less than a tenth of a second.

Trojan divers dominate Bruin platform

In opposite fashion of the swimmers, it was the men of the diving team who showed out at the Bruin Diving Invitational, winning the team event for USC.

Freshman Luc Goertzen earned the second-highest score this season among the Trojans at 696.10 in the platform event, earning him the silver at the podium, while senior Robert Gref placed third and freshman Valentino Nieto took fourth. The three also managed to all place in the top 10 of the 1-meter event, with Goertzen placing fourth at a score of 583.30.

The women placed eighth in the team event after two top-five finishes from graduate student Jenna Jagielski in the 3-meter and platform events, a top-20 dive from sophomore Alena Lotterer in the 3-meter, a top-10 score from freshman Morgan Burns in the platform and a third-place performance from sophomore Kate Miller in the platform.

USC swim and dive will have their next chance to disrupt their patterns — for better or worse — in home meets against Cal’s No. 4 men (1-2) and No. 7 women (1-1) on Jan. 16 as well as Stanford’s No. 9 men and No. 3 women on Jan. 17.