Stanford’s Brooke Forde Will Swim 400 IM/200 Free Double at Pac 12s (PSYCHS)

2021 PAC-12 WOMEN’S SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Wednesday, February 24 – Saturday, February 27
• Campus Rec & Wellness Center, University of Houston, Houston, TX
• Defending Champion: Stanford (4x) (2020 results)
• Live results
• Live Video TBD
• Championship Central
• Psych Sheets

The 2021 Pac-12 Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships, far away from Pac-12 territory in Houston, Texas, will be a much smaller meet than normal this year.

In addition to Arizona State redshirting its full roster for the season, many of the participating teams have short benches for a number of reasons.

The 4-time defending conference champions from Stanford, for example, are only bringing 17 of the allotted 24 athletes to the meet. That’s the team’s full roster this season with 3 deferrals, 1 redshirt, and 1 injury.

The Cal women, likewise, only have about 20 swimmers that they’re bringing to the meet. In some events, that means the full 24-place scoring system won’t be reached at this year’s championship (like the 400 IM, where there are only 22 entries without scratches).

The Pac-12 teams do better than most conferences at reducing their pre-meet entries, so there’s some real value to be dug out of the psych sheets.

For example, versatile Stanford senior Brooke Forde is entered as the top seed in the 500 free, 400 IM, and as the 2nd seed in the 200 free.

That means she won’t swim the 200 breaststroke, where she was the Pac-12 champion last season, nor the 200 fly, where she was 2nd in the 200 fly.

Instead, she’ll swim a day 3 double of the 400 IM and the 200 free, with the latter event coming just two races after the former. She doesn’t always keep her event lineups from Pac-12s to NCAAs, though, so we could see that change in March.

Another versatile swimmer, Cal junior Alicia Wilson, holds top-8 times in the Pac-12 this season in a whopping 7 championship events, but has whittled her Pac-12s schedule down to just 3: the 200 IM on day 2 as the top seed, a big head-to-head battle with Forde in the 400 IM on day 3, and the 200 back on day 4.

There’s still ambiguity in the schedules of some top swimmers. Cal junior Izzy Ivey, for example, has 5 individual entries: 200 IM, 50 free, 100 fly, 100 back, and 100 free. With top 2 seeds in all 5 events, she has lots of options.

Cal’s Ayla Spitz, Sarah Dimeco, and Robin Neumann, plus USC’s Isabelle Odgers also have 4 entries in highly-seeded events.