It’s the downside to being a dynasty: if you don’t come home with the championship, you feel you have fallen short. That was the situation for the men’s and women’s swimming teams, who finished third and sixth, respectively, at the NCAA championships in March.
It was the first time in 27 years that the women did not finish in the top three. Stanford entered the last day of the meet in third place, but too few Cardinal swimmers qualified for the final races. The champion, for the second year in a row, was Auburn, swimming in its home pool. “We’re not satisfied with sixth; in fact, we wouldn’t be satisfied with second,” admitted women’s head coach Richard Quick. “But now we just need to do what we can to improve for next year and make another run at it.”
The top-ranked men handily won their 22nd consecutive Pac-10 title in early March. “The freshmen and sophomores weren’t even born when the streak started,” says men’s head coach Skip Kenney, who began coaching the team 24 years ago. “This really does bring 22 years of graduates together.”
But at the NCAAs, both Auburn and the host, Texas, bested the Cardinal. “Auburn had one of those special sort of meets when nobody is going to beat them,” Kenney says. “It was really a race for second with Texas.”
The postseason did have some highlights for individual Stanford swimmers. Junior Tara Kirk continued to blow past her competitors, winning national titles in both the 100- and the 200-yard breaststroke. (At the Pac-10 championships in late February, Kirk broke her own American record in the 100-yard event with a time of 58.41 seconds.) The men’s 200-yard freestyle relay team kicked off the NCAAs on a high note, edging favored Auburn to defend its 2002 victory in the event. Junior Peter Marshall also hung onto his title in the 100-yard backstroke.
