[santacruzbear]

Sometimes you see the results of early season meets and invitationals and get discouraged. For example, in the Winter Nationals at Texas at which Cal basically only has some of next year's frosh competing, USC in the 200 IM has 5 of the top 8 swimmers (but not the fastest prelim time which goes to our own Celina Li). Likewise, the Stanford men seem to have endless swimmers who will get NCAA cuts.

But then take a look at the Georgia Invitational where both our men's and women's teams are swimming this weekend. We typically start notoriously slow, but check out the preliminary results from this morning's women's 200 IM, look at the class (freshman, sophomore etc.) of the swimmers and smile.
( First is the seed time, second the actual prelim swim).

Event 5 Women 200 Yard IM
============================================================ ======
Name Year School Seed Prelims
============================================================ ======
=== Preliminaries ===

1 Pelton, Elizabeth FR CAL 1:57.11 1:55.67
2 Margalis, Melanie JR Georgia 1:59.74 1:56.36
3 Leverenz, Caitlin SR CAL 1:56.84 1:57.06
4 Bootsma, Rachel FR CAL 2:01.74 1:57.77
5 Williamson, Ellen SO Virginia 2:01.13 1:58.30
6 Krawczyk, Merritt SR Penn State 1:59.86 1:58.61
7 Zhu, Annie FR Georgia 2:01.83 1:59.41
8 Naze, Kelly FR CAL 2:01.91 1:59.59
-----------------------------------------------------------------
9 Grima, Alicia FR CAL 2:02.73 2:00.03
10 Piehl, Caroline SO CAL 2:03.61 2:00.13
11 Scott, Olivia JR AUB 2:01.59 2:00.49
12 Weedman, Chelsea JR Penn State 2:02.29 2:00.73
13 Li, Sara JR Harvard 2:04.78 2:00.93
14 Modglin, Amy SR Penn State 2:02.06 2:00.97
15 White, Sarah SO Virginia 2:03.61 2:01.16
16 Otto, Courtney SO Harvard 2:00.41 2:01.36

[OBear073akaSMFan]

finals are in,

Event 5 Women 200 Yard IM
============================================================ ======
Name Year School Prelims Finals
============================================================ ======
=== A - Final ===

1 Pelton, Elizabeth FR CAL 1:55.67 1:53.39
2 Leverenz, Caitlin SR CAL 1:57.06 1:54.30
3 Margalis, Melanie JR Georgia 1:56.36 1:54.68
4 Bootsma, Rachel FR CAL 1:57.77 1:57.01
5 Williamson, Ellen SO Virginia 1:58.30 1:58.52
6 Zhu, Annie FR Georgia 1:59.41 1:58.84
7 Krawczyk, Merritt SR Penn State 1:58.61 1:58.90
8 Naze, Kelly FR CAL 1:59.59 1:58.91

=== B - Final ===

9 Scott, Olivia JR AUB 2:00.49 1:58.63
10 Weedman, Chelsea JR Penn State 2:00.73 1:59.21
11 Piehl, Caroline SO CAL 2:00.13 1:59.96
12 Grima, Alicia FR CAL 2:00.03 2:00.24
13 Otto, Courtney SO Harvard 2:01.36 2:00.31
14 Li, Sara JR Harvard 2:00.93 2:01.02
15 Modglin, Amy SR Penn State 2:00.97 2:01.47
16 White, Sarah SO Virginia 2:01.16 2:01.87