The Michigan women's swimming team suffered its first two losses of the season this weekend, falling to top-ranked Stanford, 198-96, on Saturday, and No. 16 California, 170-130, yesterday.
The Wolverines (3-0 Big Ten, 4-2 overall) lost all but one event to Stanford, as the Cardinal dominated the meet. Michigan coach Jim Richardson pointed to fatigue as the reason for the blowout.
"We had been through very, very vigorous training for two straight weeks down in Coronado, and it was just really, really tiring," Richardson said.
"This isn't a good time for us to have a swim meet. We want to continue our meets with Stanford, and this was the best time for us to get together with them, and really the only time. But fitting it all into the end of our Christmas training trip was not exactly when we want to have this kind of meet."
Jodi Navta was one of the few Wolverines to have a good weekend. Navta won the 100-yard breaststroke, and finished second in the 200 breaststroke against Stanford. She finished first in both events against California.
Kerri Hale also had a strong meet against Stanford, finishing second in the 400 individual medley in a time of 4:22, one of her best times this season. Richardson also cited Anne Kampfe and Shannon Shakespeare as having good meets against California.
Kerry O'Hanlon had an excellent meet for five-time defending NCAA champion Stanford, placing first in both the 100 and 200 backstroke races. Stanford won each of the first four events before Navta took the 100 breaststroke, jumping out to a 62-12 lead and never looked back.
"Stanford is the no. 1 team in the country," Richardson said. "They have a lot of depth, and they have a lot of great athletes. Character-wise, I think this is one of the best Stanford teams I've seen across the board."
Stanford is one of the few teams in the country that seems to have Michigan's number. This was the fourth meeting between the two teams in as many years, and the Cardinal has won all four meets.
Despite the two losses, Richardson sees the California training trip as a success. "The training went extremely well, and I think the results of the meets would indicate that (the swimmers) were obviously not rested. They're fatigued, and they're not swimming fast because they are fatigued.
"We got a lot of work done, more work than we calculated on getting done. We probably got about 15 percent more work than we've ever gotten before on a training trip."
For two weeks, the team put in rigorous work in Coronado, Calif., at the site of a United States Navy Seal training facility.
The average day started at 8 a.m. with stretching, and went until about 8:30 at night. The day consisted of swimming, stretching weight-lifting, and deck excercises. The Wolverines did not expect to do well in their two meets following this training trip, because they'd be fatigued, but scheduled the meets anyway to save $12,000 in travel expenses.
"We had to make a decision: do you just drop the meet , because it's not going to be an easy meet for you to swim?" Richardson said. "We chose not to do that, we chose to swim anyway."
"I don't think it hurt us any. I knew we were tired, and I knew it would be very, very difficult for us to swim at the speed that we can normally swim at. I'm not disappointed with our effort, and I'm not disappointed with our attitude."
Richardson attributed part of the losses to the administrators. "In the future, we're probably going to have to work a little harder to find a date that's a little more conducive to having a really good competition. This was just one of those years when the scheduling just wasn't compatible. In six weeks, hopefully we'll have an excellent Big Ten championship, then follow that up with a great meet in the NCAA's."
Nine Michigan swimmers have already qualified for the NCAA championship, but the Wolverines were not able to qualify any more this weekend.
The Wolverines returned to Ann Arbor late last night and next face Georgia on Saturday at the Canham Natatorium.