(Photo: Casey McNulty/Sun Devil Athletics)
TEMPE – With three top-20 teams, over 15 former Olympians competing across the board and two days of competition, to call the tri-meet between Arizona State, the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University electric would be an understatement.
But here’s the catch: the Sun Devils aren’t rattled by close competition. In particular, head coach Herbie Behm appreciates the motivation that such intense matchups provide for his team.
“We’ve had a really good rivalry with Cal specifically over the last few years,” Behm said. “It’s always really fun and brings out the best of both teams when we compete. We were excited for the opportunity to do that.”
After one day of competition at Mona Plummer, Arizona State’s men’s team leads over both Cal and Stanford by slim margins, while the women trail both teams.
The women began with a third-place finish in the 200-yard medley relay. In this event, the top relays for Cal and Stanford had Olympians either leading or anchoring their quartets. However, the team of sophomore Miriam Sheehan, senior Iza Adame, freshman Julia Ullmann and graduate student Caroline Bentz still managed to score some points for the Devils. The standout for the Sun Devil women was Bentz, who anchored the race and touched second in the 100-yard backstroke and third in the 100-yard freestyle.
Sheehan, who competed at the Tokyo Olympics, finished the night with two third-place finishes: one in the 200-yard medley relay and another in the 100-yard backstroke. The sophomore felt exhilarated rather than threatened by the level of competition.
“There are pros and cons to having more intense competitions,” Sheehan said. “We’ve been putting in the work, so there’s no reason to be afraid of that competition, and it’s a lot of fun to go up against faster swimmers.”
For women’s diving, sophomore Kayden Hayes led the night for ASU with 239.60 points in the 1-meter and 250.00 points in the 3-meter, placing seventh in both events.
The Sun Devil men opened the evening with a dominant first-place finish in the 200-yard medley relay. The squad of freshman Lucien Vergnes, junior Andy Dobrzanski, sophomore Ilya Kharun and junior Jonny Kulow touched nearly two seconds ahead of Cal to claim the win. This primary victory was exactly what the Sun Devils needed to set the tone for the night.
Vergnes carried his winning momentum from the relay into the 100-yard backstroke. Typically a breaststroker, the freshman displayed powerful versatility in the pool. Vergnes finished first and achieved a new personal best of 45.32 seconds, claiming the third-fastest time in the NCAA. Also displaying strength in his usual stroke, Vergnes took second place in the 100-yard breaststroke, right behind Dobrzanski for a Sun Devil one-two punch.
The men finished Thursday’s racing on the same note they began it. Kulow anchored the men’s 400-yard freestyle relay and led the Sun Devils to victory. His fellow teammates of Kharun, senior Patrick Sammon and sophomore Filip Senc-Samardzic bested Cal by nearly three and a half seconds to take first place.
For diving, junior Lane Stallworth was the lone star for the Sun Devils. Stallworth earned a second-place finish in the 3-meter event, earning 343.80 points. He also achieved a fifth-place finish in the 1-meter event with 261.75 points.
Arizona State looks to close out the tri-meet on Friday afternoon. Behm believes two-day competitive matchups like this can only make his team better and prepare the Devils for the rest of the season.
“Just do the best we can, how we recover, how we sleep,” Behm said. “This is really good preparation for NCAAs, where it’s kind of late at night, and you get back up early in the morning, so just learning how to do that early is a good thing. Definitely the best preparation we can have.”
