UCLA
Pac-12 Championships
No. 25 Bruins Honored on Final Day of Pac-12s
March 02, 2019 | Swimming & Diving
FEDERAL WAY, Wash. โ No. 25 UCLA finished in sixth place and senior Maria Polyakova was crowned the Diver of the Meet on the fourth and final day of the 2019 Pac-12 Swimming and Diving Championships.
The Bruins have now accrued three consecutive Diver of the Meet Awards at the Pac-12 Championships. Eloise Belanger earned the honor in 2018 and Polyakova was honored for the first time in her career in 2017.
UCLA came into the meet looking for a sweep of the diving events after senior Polyakova won both the 1-meter and 3-meter diving championships.
Eloise Belanger, the reigning Pac-12 Diver of the Year, qualified for the finals of the platform championships after finishing second in the prelims with a score of 255.10.
The Montreal, Quebec native followed that up with a sixth-place performance in the finals, logging a final score of 231.70. She was third going into her final dive after receiving a score of 61.50 on her penultimate attempt.
In the pool, freshman Mara Newman had the highest finish of any UCLA swimmer on Saturday, taking sixth in the 200 backstroke finals with a time of 1:53.73.
Jennifer Lathrop (1:55.62), Abriana Howard (1:56.28), and Delaney Smith (1:57.73) went 3-5-7 in the B Final of the 200 back.
Senior Sandra Soe opened up Saturday's finals session by swimming the mile for the final time in her career. The San Jose, Calif. native ended up eighth with a time of 16:12.90, her second-best this season.
Katie Sulkevich (16:43.16) and Lisa Kaunitz (16:53.69) placed 19-20 in the 1650 free.
Junior Kenisha Liu picked up UCLA's final individual top-10 finish, placing eighth in the 100 free at 48.65. That mark represented her third-best of the year. Claire Grover, who hit the podium in the 50 free on Thursday and was fourth-place finisher in the 100 breast on Friday, qualified for the B Final in the 100 free and ended up 11th at 48.83, less than a tenth of a second behind her season-best prelims time.
UCLA had a participant in the B Final of the last two individual swim events of the night, as Amy Okada was 12th in the 200 fly finals while Emma Schanz placed 15th in the 200 breast at 2:12.65.
The Bruins closed out the competition with a sixth-place finish in the 400 free relay.ย
Final Team Scores
1. Stanford University 1775
2. University of California- Berk 1352
3. University of Southern Calif 1183.5
4. Arizona State University 932.5
5. University of Arizona 837
6. UCLAย 835
7. Utah, University of 531.5
8. Washington State University 284.5
9. Oregon State University 172
Players Mentioned
