Lady Bruins Roar, Sink UCSD, 165-80

WESTWOOD, Calif., January 15. EIGHT UCLA pool records fell today as Coach Cyndi Gallagher's UCLA Lady Bruin swimmers and divers dominated the Tritons from UCSD, winning 165-80.

Bruin junior Kim Vandenberg, November's Pac-10 Swimmer of the Month, opened the proceedings with a pool record 1:47.83 leading off the 800 free relay (16th-fastest nationally), a race the Bruins won with a pool record 7:21.64. The team of Vandenberg, Jane Imagane, Katie Nelson, and Shannon Hackett also picked up an "B" NCAA qualifying mark.

UCLA also set meet records in the 200 medley relay (1:45.35: Katie Arnold, Eileen Seissen, Amy Thurman and Kendall Butler), 100 back (Arnold, 56.79), 100 breast (Luisa Los-Santos, 1:04.43), 200 IM (Chiemi Yamamoto, 2:05.05), 200 breast (Yamamoto, 2:17.50) and 100 fly (Vandenberg, 53.95). Yamamoto's 2:17.50 200 breast was a "B" cut.

Vandenberg added to her successful afternoon's work with an NCAA "A" standard in the 200 fly (1:56.29) and a "B" in the 100. Her career-best/Bruin record in the 200 is 1:55.13 from last season's Pac 10s at Belmont Plaza –sixth on the all-time conference performers' list.

Los-Santos, Yamamoto and Vandenberg each recorded double victories. Yamamoto won the 200 breast and 200 IM (2:05.05), Los-Santos won the 100 breast (1:04.43) and 100 free (52.34) and Vandenberg won both flys.

In the diving competition, the Bruins swept the top five spots in both the one-meter and three-meter events. Paige Thompson won the 1-meter competition (271.80), followed by Janine Strack (262.40), Amanda Blong (2:53.80), Brittany Renfrow (2:51.80) and Heather Peng (217.10). On the 3-meter, Blong won with 283.85 points, followed by Thompson (275.05), Renfrow (246.95), Strack (232.80) and Peng (222.00).

The Bruins will head north in two weeks for Pac-10 meets against Stanford (Fri., Jan. 28) and California (Sat., Jan. 29). They will face cross-town rival USC on Saturday, Feb. 12 at USC, before heading to Washington for the Pac-10 Championships February 23-26.

The win was Gallagher's 105th as Bruin boss, most for any UYCLA women's swim coach. She's also won a pair of Pac-10 Championships during her tenure in Westwood (2001/'03) and is the only coach aside from Arizona's Frank Busch (2000) to break Stanford’s monopoly on the title since the Pac-10 began sponsoring a women's championship in the mid '80s.

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