Pacific 10 Women’s Swimming Championships : Stanford Wins Easily; USC Second

Stanford’s George Haines wasn’t the only happy coach after his team ran away with the first Pacific 10 women’s swimming title.

USC Coach Don LaMont was, as he put it, “one happy camper” after the Trojan women finished second. He was happy about finishing ahead of UCLA, and he was happy with his list of National Collegiate Athletic Assn. qualifying times.

UCLA Coach Tom Jahn was even happy, although he would have liked to have beaten USC. Jahn said: “Our team made one standard after another. I had a young team, but they started gaining confidence, and they were really getting it done. . . .

“We got five more standards and even Catherine Capriles, who already had qualified, had her lifetime best (in the 200-yard backstroke), unshaved.”

Those things make for successful meets, final scores notwithstanding.

For that matter, the final score had nothing to do with the numbers that had Haines nodding his approval.

In winning the first Pac-10 title since the merger of the NorPac Conference (Oregon State, Cal, Washington and Washington State) and the Pacific West (Arizona State, Stanford, UCLA and USC), Stanford rolled up an incredible 1,452 points.

USC was second with 1,237.5 points and UCLA was third with 1,121.5. Staying close were Arizona State at 1,003.5 and Cal with 987.

There was a big drop to Arizona with 685.5, Washington with 408, Washington State with 256 and Oregon State with 234.

“We weren’t even thinking about the points,” Haines said. “We did exactly what we wanted to do. We got 17 people qualified with 11 new times, and we improved about 14 times.”

Seventeen is the limit on swimming entries for the NCAA meet next month, assuming that the school uses its 18th entry for divers.

Haines was feeling pretty good about Stanford’s chances in the NCAA meet with the qualifying statement: “If we can get everybody healthy at the same time. We’ve had different people doing good things every meet. I’ll feel good about it if we could get everyone to do it at the same time.”

Stanford sophomore Jenna Johnson is suffering from a very bad cold at this meet. Johnson, the NCAA defending champion, finished second in the 100-yard freestyle. But, indicative of Stanford’s depth, she finished second to teammate Aimee Berzins, who had won the 200-yard freestyle the night before.

UCLA picked up most of its points in the sprint, with Jenny Susser finishing third and freshman Kim Rosso finishing fourth.

Rosso missed the qualifying time in that race, but came back to make it when she led off the final relay, the 400-yard freestyle relay.

Stanford won the relay, followed by Cal, ASU, UCLA and USC.

The Bruins had been hoping the race for second would be close enough to be decided by finishing ahead of the Trojans in the final relay. But even with 68 points from the one-meter diving competition (taking place at the University of Arizona) to 48 diving points for USC, the Bruins were not within reach.

USC had scored 109 points in the first event of the night when Leslie Daland won the 1,650 with teammates Carol Peterson, Kathy Hettche, Cynthia Woodhead and Lisa Wen also scoring.

Mary T. Meagher of Cal won the 200-yard butterfly to complete the sweep after winning the 100 the night before.

Susan Rapp of Stanford won the 200-yard breaststroke, and Michelle Donahue of Stanford won the 200-yard breaststroke, an event in which Stanford scored 126 points.

The top six finishers in the 200-yard breaststroke were under the NCAA qualifying standard.

LaMont, in registering his approval of the Pac-10 format over the Northern and Southern conferences, said: “This has to be the toughest conference in the country. We have five of the top 10 teams right here. We have Olympians and world record-holders here. That helps everyone. . . .

“I think the Pac-10 meet is going to catch on. When we had our conference meet last year, we didn’t have nearly this many people. Give us a couple of years and we’ll have three times as many people as we had here tonight (an estimated 250). We’ll have these stands full.”