After Recentering Her Mental Health as a HS Senior, Adriana Smith Is Back to Best Times at Cal

2025 ACC Swimming and Diving Championships

• February 18-22, 2025
• Greensboro Aquatic Center — Greensboro, North Carolina
• Full Event Schedule (pre-scratch timeline)
• Championship Central
• Psych Sheets
• Live Results
• Live Streaming
• Day 1 Recap
• Day 2 Recap

There have been a handful of notable mid-week time trials at the ACC Championships in Greensboro this week, mostly coming on the women’s side of the pool.

Among those is a 52.66 in the 100 back from Cal freshman Adriana Smith, which knocked three-tenths of a second off her previous season best from the mid-season Minnesota Invitational.

The Lafayette, California native came to Cal with a best time of 52.87, done at the CIF North Coast Section Championships during her junior year of high school.

After a breakout junior year of high school Smith struggled with mental health during the summer before her senior season, which she documented in a senior letter to her Orinda Aquatics teammates (worth reading, and sharing). The result was a regression in her results – peaking at a 54.41 at Winter Juniors in the 100 back, her best event.

But she says a mindset shift, where she took the pressure off swimming once she left the pool and focused on other interests and passions, reoriented her relationship with the sport, and it’s paying off during her first season of college swimming.

While she’s not on the team’s scoring roster this season, she leaves the meet with a new lifetime best. It took a 52.28 in the 100 back to earn an invite to last year’s NCAA Championship meet.

The Virginia Tech women also put in a huge effort in a series of 500 free time trials on Thursday afternoon, with six swimmers competing and five swimming new lifetime bests.

• Kate Anderson – 4:45.36 (-2.13)
• Delaney Bookstein – 4:46.04 (-.47)
• Sydney Starnes – 4:48.00 (-.98)
• Camille Weiss – 4:50.41 (-1.67)
• Maddy Grafmiller – 4:51.94 (-2.81)

Anderson’s swim would have put her 18th in the heats, and was three seconds better than the 4:48.54 she did in prelims for 25th. In fact, all six swimmers swam in prelims, and Virginia Tech wasn’t able to earn a second swim for any of them – so the time trial was an opportunity to go into Friday with better performances under their belts and a better mood for the Hokies distance crew.

Other notable time trial results include a 22.58 in the 50 free from Stanford’s Anna Shaw and a 52.96 in the 100 fly from Stanford’s Levenia Sim.