Nov. 18, 2009

LOS ANGELES, Calif. -

Psych Sheets

LMU swimming returns to the pool this week when it travels to Long Beach, Calif. to participate in the Toshiba Classic hosted by UC San Diego. A three-day event with the potential to be one of the fastest West Coast meets this year, the NCAA Championship-format meet will be held Thursday through Saturday at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool.

The women's field includes 24 teams, with defending National Champion California highlighting the group. Also included are Stanford, Hawaii and UCLA, who finished fourth, 29th and 41st respectively at the NCAA D-I National Championships this past spring. In addition to the Lions, six other PCSC schools will be competing on the women's side - Cal Baptist, Chapman, Soka, Alaska Fairbanks, UC San Diego and Pepperdine. On the men's side, the Toshiba Classic field features 14 squads, including Stanford, third-place finishers in the 2009 NCAA Division I National Championships.

"With the likes of California, Hawaii, Stanford and UCLA in attendance, I think this meet will be a good experience for our swimmers as they are forced to compete against some of the best swimmers in the world, including 2008 Olympians Dana Vollmer from Cal, and Julia Smit and Elaine Breeden from Stanford," Head Coach Bonnie Adair said.

As is often the case, the Lions are strongest in the freestyle sprint events, with seniors Anne Scott and Alicia Witter leading the way. Scott is seeded 13th out of 228 competitors in the 50 freestyle, 14th in the 200, and 10th in the 100. Witter follows close behind with a 12th seed in the 100, a 19th seed in the 200, and a 20th seed in the 500 freestyle. Junior transfer Isabella Zhang made the top-24 with a 23rd seed in both the 50 and 100 freestyle events. Junior Carolyn Pasque will join Scott, Witter and Zhang in the sprint 200 & 400 freestyle relays, which are seeded eighth (after removing the non-scoring "B" relays) and fifth, respectively.

Other top-24 seeds are sophomore Tammy Choy in all three of her events, namely the 200 (22nd) and 400 (15th) individual medleys, and the 200 backstroke (18th). Freshman Camille Hopp is seeded 21st in the 100 breaststroke, and just outside the top-24 at 27th in the 200 breaststroke. Sophomore Jill Dahle made the top-24 in the 500 freestyle at 17th, and will swim one of the four legs of the 800 freestyle relay in which the Lions have their highest seed of the meet (fifth) behind California, Stanford, UCLA and Hawaii.

For more information, including results following each day of the three-day competition, please click here.