Swim and dive faces first dual meet defeats of season in Grand Canyon State

A pair of losses capped off the Bruins’ trip to the desert.

UCLA swim and dive (2-2, 1-2 Pac-12) traveled to the Grand Canyon State over the weekend, falling 173-121 to Arizona State (2-1, 2-1) on Friday before being defeated by Arizona (1-2, 1-2) by a score of 138.5-123.5 on Saturday. The losses marked the Bruins’ first dual meets on the road as well as their first dual meet defeats of the season.

Senior swimmer Ella Kirschke said having an underclassmen-heavy roster on the road made a difference in UCLA’s performance over the weekend.

“We brought a very young team, so it’s a learning curve coming to the other team’s environment and still competing at a high level,” Kirschke said. “That was definitely a change.”

Coach Jordan Wolfrum added that the Sun Devils’ more experienced roster helped them pick up a win against the Bruins on Friday.

“They’re a bit of an older team than we are (and) that experience shows,” Wolfrum said. “We’re a really young team. We got to see some swimmers who we’ve known in the conference for a long time that are just really strong athletes.”

UCLA logged two event wins from two different swimmers against Arizona State compared to 11 victories each against UC Santa Barbara and Washington State in its first two dual meets of the season.

Junior swimmer Sophia Kosturos picked up UCLA’s first win of the day by outswimming Arizona State’s Riley Lexvold by a tenth of a second in the 100-yard backstroke. Kosturos’ time of 55.25 marked a season best in the event.

Nine events later, Kirschke logged a first-place finish in the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:02.04. The senior was also the only Bruin to record two top-two individual finishes with a second-place time in the 200-yard freestyle.

Four Bruins picked up individual wins in UCLA’s meet against Arizona on Saturday, including a 200-yard individual medley win from Kirschke for the second day and third meet in a row.

Kirschke said she had been working on individual medley events in particular in practice.

“I’ve been trying to work on my tempo, and we’ve been doing a lot of hard IM practices,” Kirschke said. “It has increased my endurance and allowed me to just be more confident going into the races (so) that I’m prepared and can plan them out better.”

Junior swimmer Rachel Rhee, sophomore swimmer Bailey Herbert and freshman swimmer Paige MacEachern also logged individual event wins for UCLA. MacEachern grabbed the victory in the 1000-yard freestyle in her first time swimming the event.

Despite the loss, Wolfrum said she was proud of how the team improved between meets, narrowing its margin of defeat by 37 points between matchups against Arizona State and Arizona.

“These were our first really big challenges of the season,” Wolfrum said. “We’ve done a lot of racing and a lot of competing, but these were our first big challenges. … I was really proud of the adjustments that our team made and some of the really, really good competing that we got to see (Saturday).”