UCLA swimming and diving to measure progress with USC meet

After five months of competition, UCLA swimming and diving will have to push through its fatigue if the team hopes to be successful against USC.

The No. 19 Bruins will close out their regular season with a meet against the No. 7 USC Trojans at Spieker Aquatics Center on Friday. Two weeks ago, the Trojans defeated No. 3 California and narrowly lost to No. 2 Stanford – a pair of teams who had no trouble beating UCLA the same weekend.

Swimming coach Cyndi Gallagher has had a philosophy her entire career that emphasizes improvement from meet to meet.

“Once you figure out that you can’t control anybody else, and just get better every day, then you’re going to be happier and reach your potential,” Gallagher said. “It’s hard to do when you go into meets against Stanford, Cal and USC.”

With the regular season coming to a conclusion, this meet will be a measuring stick for the improvements the team has made through the year, and for how prepared the Bruins will be heading into the Pac-12 championships at the end of the month.

Although the swimmers and divers are beginning to taper their workouts in preparation for the end-of-year meets, fatigue was apparent during the Cal meet.

“Part of it is about developing that toughness around not feeling perfect,” said diving coach Tom Stebbins. “Having to be good when you don’t feel good is a really great indicator of what you’re capable of.”

Against the Cardinal and Golden Bears, the Bruins were without sophomore diver Maria Polyakova, who was competing at a national competition in Russia. Stepping up to the challenge of leading the team at the last two meets was freshman Éloïse Bélanger, who had a rough finish after winning the first three diving events.

READ MORE: Maria Polyakova’s international presence.

Bélanger dominated the 1-meter, setting new meet records against both Bay Area schools. She also posted a season-best on the 3-meter dive against Stanford, but struggled against Cal.

“It was a day where I was really tired,” Bélanger said. “I was probably not able to focus as much as I wanted. I just had a bad day.”

UCLA’s top four divers will be focused on the big picture rather than the meet this weekend, as they’ll almost assuredly see USC at the conference championships and at the NCAA championships.

“For (Éloïse), and Maria, and Annika (Lenz) and Ciara (Monahan), our emphasis with those four will clearly be on the NCAA Zone meet and trying to get us physically and mentally ready for that day,” Stebbins said.

At the final regular season meet of the year, though, both coaches will ultimately be looking for improvement.

“You can have a world record but you’ll never have a perfect swim according to me,” Gallagher said.