Cal-Stanford Tri-Distance Meet Features Swift Backstrokes by Murphy, Fast Freestyles by Messerschmidt

BERKELEY, California, November 6. THE annual Tri-Distance meet between Stanford and California produced more top times between the two Bay Area rivals, as the Golden Bears boasted a win in four of the six event categories.

The unscored meet put swimmers into one of six stroke categories: butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, sprint freestyle, distance freestyle and individual medley. In the first four categories, each swimmer races 50, 100 and 200 yards of their stroke, while the IMers compete in the 100-, 200- and 400-yard individual medley. The distance freestylers race in distances of 200, 500 and 1000 yards. The swimmer with the fastest combined time after three races wins the category.

California won the breaststroke, sprint free, distance free and IM categories, as Stanford won the butterfly and backstroke sections.

In posting the fastest time of the day in the 100 fly with a 49.55 and a 1:47.64 in the 200 fly, Tom Kremer did enough to win the butterfly category. He posted the third-fastest 50 fly of the day with a 22.45 behind Cal’s Long Gutierrez (22.17) and Marcin Tarczynski (22.18). Kremer’s combined time of 2:59.64 was the only sub-3:00 butterfly time of the day.

Ryan Murphy would have easily won the backstroke section and given Cal a fifth victory, if not for a disqualification in the 50 backstroke. He swam a 47.52 in the 100 backstroke and 1:43.49 in the 200 back, which was light years ahead of winner David Nolan of Stanford. Nolan won the 50 back officially with a 22.60, was second behind teammate Ryan Arata’s 50.22 in the 100 back with a 50.26 and touched out Arata by two tenths of a second in the 200 back, 1:49.29 to 1:49.49. Notably, Murphy’s times in the 100 and 200 backstrokes are just a few tenths off his best of the season that sit at the top of the collegiate rankings, showing remarkable consistency for the freshman phenom.

Cal would easily win the remaining categories. In the breaststroke events, Ryan Studebaker won two of the three breaststroke races, posting a 26.04 in the 50 breast and 2:04.30 in the 200 breast. His 57.09 in the 100 breast was second to the 57.05 posted by Stanford’s Christian Brown.

Tyler Messerschmidt, like Ryan Murphy, showed consistency in posting some quick sprint freestyle times to win that category. His 20.21 in the 50 free tied with teammate Seth Stubblefield as the best splash-and-dash swims of the day, while Messerschmidt got the upper hand in the 100 free with a 44.15 that is just a tenth slower than his fourth-ranked time. Messerschmidt closed out competition with a 1:38.67 in the 200 free, two tenths faster than Stubblefield. Messerschmidt would win the category by .78 over Stubblefield.

Jeremy Bagshaw, the current national leader in the 1000 free with a 9:02.45, won the distance freestyle category today. He started with a 1:40.48 in the 200 free, then posted a 4:28.65 in the 500 free. He concluded with a 9:08.01 to cruise through the 1000 free, which would still put him in the top five nationally.

In the IM group, Josh Prenot reigned in a close race with Stanford’s Max Williamson. After posting a 51.36 in the 100 IM to beat Williamson by nine tenths of a second, Prenot’s journey to the IM category win was not going to be easy. He beat Williamson in the 200 IM by just one tenth of a second, 1:49.99 to 1:50.09, and by two hundredths of a second in the 400 IM, 3:51.58 to 3:51.60.

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