The Bruins entered their first year in the Big Ten ready to prove they were a competitive threat to some of the nation’s top-ranked teams.

And while the Bruins may have fallen short of breaking into the top five at the conference championships, this didn’t indicate failure.

No. 23 UCLA swim and dive (3-5, 0-1 Big Ten) placed seventh at the Big Ten championships in Columbus, Ohio, at the McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion. The Bruins rounded out their inaugural trip to the five-day meet on Sunday with a score of 544.

“Big Tens is one of the hardest meets across the board, even comparing it to things like the Olympics,” said graduate student Emma Harvey.

UCLA closely trailed No. 24 Minnesota, coming just 48 points short of the sixth-place Golden Gophers.

“We are good enough to be top six, so we’ll have to get back to work and come back and make it happen next year,” said coach Jordan Cordry.

The Bruins lost crucial points early on when they were disqualified from the 800-yard freestyle relay for a false start in the last leg of the race. The disqualification, which came in the meet’s second event, garnered UCLA zero points in comparison to Minnesota’s 46 for seventh place, a crucial finish the Bruins would have needed to place higher.

“We put those athletes in a really challenging position,” Cordry said. “It wasn’t our A lineup.”

Redshirt junior Gizem Guvenc, who regularly anchors the Bruins’ freestyle relays, was absent from the competition, forcing the team to adjust. Freshman Claudia Yovanovich stepped up and helped guide the team to a school record of 1:28.85 on Thursday in the final leg of the 200-yard freestyle relay. It was the first time that Yovanovich had ever swum the event – in fact, it was the first time she had done a relay exchange all year.

The Bruins also nabbed a school record in the 200-yard medley relay. UCLA earned an NCAA “A” standard with a 1:35.80 mark – a time that automatically qualifies the squad for the national championships and marks the first time in 10 years that the Bruins have earned an A-cut time in a relay race.

Harvey described the race as the highlight of the meet.

“As an athlete, rarely ever do you finish and say, ‘That was awesome,'” Harvey said. “That was perfect. I couldn’t have done better.”

Harvey, who ultimately finished seventh in the 100-yard butterfly, was one of four Bruins to qualify for an A final. Senior Paige MacEachern placed eighth in the 400-yard individual medley, adding almost two seconds to her 4:09.32 in the preliminary heats, while freshman Karolina Piechowicz shaved 0.01 seconds off her entry time to finish fourth in the 100-yard breaststroke.

Piechowicz’s 59.27 mark broke her school record and earned her a spot on the All-Big Ten Freshman team alongside Yovanovich.

Senior Ana Jih-Schiff joined Piechowicz in the 100-yard breaststroke final in addition to competing in the 200-yard breaststroke final, finishing in eighth place across both events.

“Getting to see UCLA on the Big Ten podium in those finals was a big deal,” Cordry said. “It was really special.”

On the diving side of the competition, junior Eden Cheng earned the Bruins’ highest placement of the meet, taking fourth in the platform dive and earning UCLA’s first-ever top five individual finish in the discipline at the Big Ten championships.

“The Big Ten is, I would say, the toughest and the best conference in the country,” said Cheng, a Paris Olympian. “It was great to see where I stood in a field containing the reigning NCAA champ.”

No. 14 Ohio State triumphed over No. 7 Indiana – the reigning conference champion – to place first with 1,313.5 points. No. 10 Michigan rounded out the podium in the third-place spot, finishing with 1,149.5 points.

Despite the fact that the Bruins didn’t secure the sixth-place finish they went into the meet eager to earn, Cheng said she is proud of how they represented UCLA.

“We came together as a team,” Cheng said. “We did lose some points on the first day, but we came back, and you could really see the fire.”

Before the national championships in March, Cheng and the rest of the diving squad will compete in diving zones, while some of the swimmers will head to Texas for a last-chance meet where the Bruins can pick up more A-cut times.

“We’d like to add a few more people to that NCAA roster,” Cordry said. “We’re hungrier for a little bit more.”