Swimming / Tracy Dodds : Pac-10 Meet Seen as Showcase for NCAA Finals

If ever a meet could be considered a preview of what will happen at the National Collegiate Athletic Assn. finals next month, the first Pac-10 women’s swim meet this weekend is it, according to UCLA Coach Tom Jahn.

In the past, Oregon State, Cal, Washington and Washington State competed in the NorPac Conference, and Arizona State, Stanford, UCLA and USC competed in the Pacific West Conference. This will be the first conference meet under the new alignment.

Nine of the Pac-10 teams will compete. Oregon does not have a women’s swimming team.

Of the teams in the meet starting today and running through Sunday at East Los Angeles College, five are ranked in the coaches’ national top 10.

Stanford is ranked second, behind Texas, the defending national champion; UCLA is No. 5, USC No. 6, Cal No. 7 and Arizona State No. 10.

This meet is also the last chance for swimmers who have not made the NCAA qualifying times in their events to do so. That will be a continuing theme throughout the three-day meet.

Swimmers who have already made the standards--Stanford has 14--will not be shaved or tapered and will be looking to score points without regard to time. But swimmers still trying to make the national meet will be going all out.

The NCAA qualifying standards get tougher every year as meet organizers seek to seed only 32 swimmers into each event. As Jahn put it, “It is absolutely unbelievable how hard it is just to get to that meet, so the swimmers who go to the national meet have already established themselves as the elite.”

That will be the goal of many this weekend in the 16-foot deep pool that has been used for several national championship meets. It is considered a fast pool.

But the swimmers also will be concentrating on the team competition in this new conference. Realistically, it will be about four teams battling for every point in a chase for second.

“Stanford certainly is the favorite,” Jahn said. “They have just such incredible depth, I don’t think we can expect an upset. But UCLA, USC, Arizona State, Cal and maybe even Arizona will be vying for that second spot.

“I think it will be very exciting. The energy level of this meet will be high. We’re going to move this meet along quickly, and we’re going to see the places changing after every event.

“I think it will go down to the last relay.”

Preliminary heats will begin each day at 11 a.m. with finals scheduled to begin at 7 p.m. and end by 9.

Among the standout swimmers competing will be Olympians Jenna Johnson and Susan Rapp of Stanford, and Mary T. Meagher of Cal.

Johnson, a sophomore from La Habra, won Olympic gold medals on the 400-meter freestyle relay team and the 400-meter medley relay team. She has already qualified for four NCAA individual events.

Rapp won the silver medal in the 200-meter breaststroke at the ’84 Olympics.

Meagher won gold medals in both butterfly events and with the 400-meter medley relay team.

USC has two ’84 Olympians still competing, Cynthia (Sippy) Woodhead, silver medalist in the 200-meter freestyle, and Anne Ottenbrite, who won the gold in the 200-meter breaststroke for Canada.

UCLA will also be host to the men’s Pac-10 swim meet next weekend at the Cerritos Olympic Swim Center. Stanford, five-time defending champion, is also favored in that meet.

On the weekend between the women’s NCAA meet March 19-21 and the men’s April 2-4, the top American swimmers not competing in those meets--high school swimmers and those who have completed college eligibility and are looking toward ‘88--will compete in the Phillips 66-U.S. Swimming Short Course national meet in Boca Raton, Fla.

The national meet will be used to select swimmers for the U.S. Olympic Festival July 14-16 in Chapel Hill, N.C., and for a team to compete in a U.S.-Canada dual meet April 4-5.

Whitney Hedgepeth, 15, of Colonial Heights, Va., was a standout for the U.S. team that competed in three European meets earlier this month.

Hedgepeth won six bronze medals and was in the finals of three other events. She swam the backstroke, butterfly and individual medleys. She also swam on the team that set an American record of 1 minute 43.22 seconds in the 200 freestyle relay.