Men’s swimming topples Pacific in first regular-season meet

Feb. 7, 2021, 8:11 p.m.

Nearly 11 months have elapsed since Stanford finished third in the 2020 Pac-12 championships. No. 11 men’s swimming (1-0, 0-0 Pac-12) finally took to the pool in its first and only regular season meet at Avery Aquatics Center, defeating the University of the Pacific (0-1, 0-0 MPSF) 171-66. 

The Cardinal finished first in all 14 swimming events. No diving events were held this meet.

The all-freshman team of Jonathan Affeld on backstroke, Ethan Dang on breaststroke, Ethan Hu on butterfly and Luke Maurer on freestyle kicked off the Cardinal’s meet with a victory in the 200-yard medley with a time of 1:26.95. 

Affeld utilized his prowess on other strokes in butterfly and freestyle to claim an individual victory in the 100-yard butterfly and to lead off the Cardinal as the opening leg in the 400-yard freestyle relay in its 12-second win. 

Dang prevailed in the 100-yard breaststroke, clocking in at 53.50. Junior Daniel Roy won the other individual breaststroke event in the 200-yard breaststroke, finishing 1.77 seconds ahead of Dang in 1:53.09. 

Maurer and junior Mason Gonzalez traded first and second place in the 50-yard and 100-yard freestyle. Maurer out-touched Gonzalez by 0.23 seconds to emerge victorious in the 50-yard freestyle, while Gonzalez out-touched Maurer by 0.31 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle.

Sophomore Will Tarvestad finished almost six seconds ahead of Pacific’s David Noyes to top the podium in the 200-yard freestyle. Senior Grant Shoults claimed victory in the 500-yard freestyle, finishing nearly 20 seconds ahead of fellow senior Nicholas Sweetser. Sweetser won the 1000-yard freestyle by almost the same amount of time as Shoults.

Senior Alex Liang earned individuals victories in two 200-yard events, the individual medley and the butterfly. Sophomore Shane Blinkman and junior Alex Boratto came in first place in the 200-yard backstroke and the 100-yard backstroke, respectively. 

On Feb. 24, men’s diving will head to Tucson to compete in the Pac-12 Diving championships for its first competition since last March. Four days later, men’s swimming will go down to Houston to look to reclaim its first Pac-12 championship since 2017.

Contact Jordan John Lee at jjslee22 ‘at’ stanford.edu.

Jordan John Lee is a staff writer for the Sports section and occasionally writes for the News section of The Daily. Fresh off graduating with majors in Biology and Classics, he is a second-year master's student in Epidemiology and Clinical Research. From the 626, he has grown up watching his Los Angeles teams, the Dodgers and Lakers. His dream is to watch tennis at all four Grand Slam tournaments. Contact him at jjlee 'at' stanforddaily.com.

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