ASU sweeps the men’s and women’s Big 12 Championships for the second straight season

(Photo: Casey McNulty/Sun Devil Athletics)

By the time Arizona State senior Jonny Kulow touched the wall at the end of the men’s 400-yard freestyle relay and junior Ilya Kharun, graduate Adam Chaney and graduate Remi Fabiani were already celebrating on the deck of the Greensboro Aquatic Center in North Carolina.

They couldn’t wait for the anchor leg of their team to step out of the pool because they had all just made collegiate swimming history. The three teammates grabbed hold of each other and jumped around as Kulow remained in his lane, slamming his hands into the water to make a triumphant splash.

The ASU relay team had just set a new NCAA record Saturday with a time of 2:42.15 on the last day of the Big 12 Swimming and Diving Championships.

“Go get it done” was the message ASU head coach Herbie Behm sent to his team in a group chat message, opting for simplicity over a full-fledged team meeting. The message was received, and the Sun Devils delivered. The No. 2 men’s team and No. 17 women’s squad made their statement, each winning the Big 12 Conference Championship for the second year in a row.

“They’ve been doing unbelievable work training,” Behm said. “I’m not crazy surprised, obviously it’s amazing to see, but they’ve been doing crazy stuff every single day.”

The men’s team scored 1898.5 points over the five-day tournament, led by Kharun, the Men’s Swimmer of the Meet. Kharun placed first in every event he competed in: three individual races and four as a member of a relay.

The women’s team defended its Big 12 title, scoring 1660.5 points with a senior and a freshman leading the charge. Freshman Albane Cachot was named the Women’s Freshman Swimmer of the Meet by winning three individual titles and two as an anchor member of three relay teams. Senior Deniz Ertan was named the Women’s Swimmer of the Meet for winning three Big 12 titles in all of the races she competed in.

The mass amount of points the team accrued did not all come from the championship rounds. The top 24 times from the preliminary events were ordered, with the top eight advancing to the championships. The next eight went to the consolation race, and the bottom eight were in a bonus heat. Even when a Sun Devil competed in the B or C finals, they treated it like a championship race. The earlier final heats were how ASU made its margin of victory nearly impossible for the other teams to reach in the standings.

“We have some studs that get all the glory and spotlight,” Behm said. “But the reality of the team score when it’s well over a thousand (points) is more on the people on the bottom that are making the B finals and C finals that they’re not necessarily supposed to be in. That’s what I’m most proud of, and that’s the most important thing.”

Ertan and junior Alexa Reyna had to endure 66 laps in order to win the longest race in the conference championship. The women’s 1650-yard freestyle was a test of stamina and patience for the two Sun Devils who finished the race together. Ertan touched the wall with a time of 16:06.04, and Reyna followed 12 seconds after her teammate. Ertan didn’t have to travel far to congratulate Reyna; she took off her swim cap and turned to her in the next lane to embrace her training partner before the two left the pool victorious.

Sophomore Lucien Vergnes, junior Brayden Taivassalo and senior Andy Dobrzanski continuously traded positions in the Sun Devils pursuit to sweep the men’s 200-yard breaststroke. Vergnes started in the lead position for the first 25 yards, but Dobrzanski was right behind him while Taivassalo focused on a steady pace. In the final 50 yards, Dobrzanski used his speed to propel him to the wall first (1:51.92), and Taivassalo (1:52.33) burst past Vergnes (1:53.02) to give the Sun Devils their last sweep of the week-long championship.

Chaney said after the men’s 200-yard backstroke that the race isn’t one of his best events. The results would say otherwise. He won the 200-back with a new meet record time of 1:38.33. Junior JT Ewing came in second at 1:39.72.

“I don’t swim it much,” Chaney said. “So I tried to do whatever I thought I could do and it seemed like it worked out fine.”

The women’s 100-yard freestyle was essentially a dual meet between the schools from Tempe and Tucson. Arizona had five swimmers in the race, and ASU brought three to the final round.

In the last 50 yards of the race, Cachot picked up her pace to the point that her stroke count was off, making her ease into the wall two yards earlier than her opponents. Cachot won the event with a meet record of 47.24 seconds. The time was also a new school record for Cachot, who started competing with the team at the beginning of the calendar year.

The men’s 100-yard freestyle was another showdown between ASU and Arizona, giving the advantage to ASU for filling the lanes with six Sun Devils. Fabiani and Kulow finished first (40.67) and second (41.47) in the race. Both Sun Devils swam better 100-yard splits in the final relay race of the day; Fabiani went 40 seconds as the third leg, and Kulow closed out the championships in 40.08 seconds.

“Every single day it’s kind of cool seeing how competitive they get with each other and doing that day-in and day-out makes something like that happen,” Behm said.

The women’s 400-yard freestyle relay started with an Arizona lead, but sophomore Julia Ullmann altered the Sun Devils’ position, swimming a 100-yard split in 48.22 seconds. The third leg was neck-to-neck between Arizona and ASU, but Cachot swam the best 100-yard split in the race (46.60) for a winning time at 3:12.86.

If there’s a part of the Championships that’s been difficult for the Sun Devils, it’s been diving. It seemed the week would end without a Sun Devil on the podium, but junior Kayden Hayes was able to get inside the top three, scoring 254.10 points in women’s platform diving.

The defending conference champ struggled in the preliminary round, scoring 233.75 points, but she did some of her best diving in the five rounds of the finals. Hayes was leading into the final round and proved she wanted the title by performing a dive that carried a high degree of difficulty. She did three and a half somersaults in the tucked position with an inward takeoff, but the risky move didn’t score enough to give her the reward, and she placed second in the competition behind Utah junior Michelle McLeod.

The Sun Devils return to Mona Plummer Aquatic Center to begin training for the NCAA Swimming Championships. The men’s team won the tournament last year for the first time in program history. The women’s portion will begin March 18-21, and the men’s is March 25-28 at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center. The NCAA Diving Zones are March 9-11 at a site yet to be announced.