The Stanford Cardinal women, at long last, have released their schedule for the 2013-2014 season, mere hours before they kick off against San Jose State on Thursday.
The schedule is a pretty light one in the fall, with one big exception: the Art Adamson Invitational at Texas A&M.
The Aggies have declined to release the full lineup of teams slated to swim at this meet, but with Stanford and the Aggies both on the lineup, it will automatically be a marquee meet. For what it’s worth, the Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics program that is loosely connected (though not formally) to the Cardinals’ NCAA program, has been to the Sectional Championships in College Station many times.
The spring schedule gets much more interesting for Stanford. They open up on the road against Texas on January 4th, then almost three weeks later welcome in Arizona and Arizona State. After a bit of a breather on the road against UCLA, they have to turn around and face USC and Cal in back-to-back meets before the Pac-12 Championships from February 26th through March 1st in Federal Way, Washington.
The Cardinal have quite a ‘swagger’ to them this season. They return 25 swimmers from last year’s team, are having one of the best recruiting runs we’ve ever seen this fall, and over the summer saw senior-to-be Maya DiRado make the World Championship team and suddenly become one of the country’s star swimmers. In only two years on the job, former Cal men’s assistant Greg Meehan has really brought a new edge to this program (though they’ve never slipped far from the spotlight, having finished in the top 10 for 33 straight seasons).
Their first meet against San Jose State should be a win, but keep in mind that the Spartans are coming off of two-straight WAC Championships, and are still a very, very young team. Last year, they actually won three events against the Cardinal, so in the least it should be an entertaining meet.
Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com.
He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming.
Aside from his life on the InterWet, …
