By James Hemker on January 11, 2020

For the 10th-straight year, No. 19 men’s swimming and diving drowned the University of Pacific. The Cardinal opened their 2020 winter dual meet season with a comfortable 198-82 victory, winning all 16 events.



Three Cardinal athletes each won two events. In the diving well, sophomore Conor Casey placed first on both the 1-meter (356.48) and 3-meter (311.18) boards. Senior James Murphy was king of middle distance, claiming both the 200-yard free (1:39.33) and 500-yard free (4:29.54).



Senior Grant Shoults made his triumphant return to the dual meet stage with wins in the 200-yard butterfly (1:48.50) and 400-yard IM (3:54.01). Shoults missed last season with a shoulder injury that forced surgery and a lengthy recovery period. In the IM, Shoults trailed his teammate junior Johannes Calloni going into the final 50 yards, but he was able to catch Calloni and take the win by 15 one-hundredths of a second.



Calloni was not without his own successes, claiming the 200-yard backstroke (1:44.52) with a six-second lead. Senior Ben Ho took the 100-yard back (49.03) with a comfortable second-and-a-half lead.



The relays opened and closed the meet, with Stanford’s 200-yard medley relay “A” team drawing first blood in 1:29.19. Sophomore Mason Gonzalez, junior Jordan Greenberg, senior Will Macmillan and freshman Will Tarvestad brought home the victory with an emphatic 1:22.46 win in the 200-yard free relay.



Greenberg headed a sweep of the 50-yard freestyle, touching the wall at 20.80. Just behind him, Macmillan and freshman Roy Neel tied for second (20.83). Macmillan would win an event outright — the 100-yard butterfly in 48.79.



Sophomore Jack LeVant was victorious in the other sprint event, the 100-yard freestyle. One of the team’s top swimmers, LeVant never trailed in his 45.26 race.



Junior Matthew Hirschberger and freshman Andrew Matejka dominated the longest race of the afternoon, the 1000-yard free. By the halfway point, the race was distilled to the two of them, with Hirschberger (9:20.02) outlasting Matejka (9:32.22). Both were more than half a minute ahead of third place.



Head coach Dan Schemmel said the team’s breaststroke unit was one of its best, and on Saturday it lived up to the praise. In both the 100-yard and 200-yard variants, every Cardinal swimmer finished ahead of every Pacific swimmer. Sophomore Daniel Roy won the 200 (1:58.84), while junior Brennan Pastorek stopped the clock first in the 100 (55.29).



The Cardinal will be back in Avery on Jan. 24 to face Arizona State alongside the women’s team.



Contact James Hemker at jahemker ‘at’ stanford.edu.

