It made a little history, broke a school record, just missed some others and moved up on the final day. Despite a lot of positives, the Stanford men's swimming and diving team finished fourth on the final day of the NCAA Championships at Ohio State University on Sunday in Columbus, Ohio.
The history was made by sophomore Chad La Tourette, who became Stanford's first 1,650-yard freestyle champion in 23 years. Bobby Bollier broke his school record in the 200 fly and the Cardinal scored 369 points.
La Tourette blew away the field in the mile, becoming the first Cardinal winner in the NCAA's longest distance event since Jeff Kostoff won in 1984, 1986 and 1987. La Tourette's time of 14:42.87 was a pool record, beating out Georgia's Martin Grodzki (14:48.15) by six seconds.
"I felt pretty good. My race wasn't as fast as I would have liked, but it feels great to be an NCAA champion," said La Tourette. "I was worried after the first 500, but I felt ok and I was able to progress from there and bring it home."
Stanford moved up from fifth place following the first two days as the Cardinal extended an impressive streak dating to 1982 in which it has finished in the top-four each of those years, while winning eight national titles.
Stanford this week produced two NCAA Champions (La Tourette and Eugene Godsoe) and had 24 All-American finishes, despite being one of three teams that came to the championships sick with a stomach virus. Texas won the title with 500 points, Cal was second (469.5), followed by Arizona (369).
Godsoe finished third in the 200 backstroke on Sunday, following a win in the 100 back and a third-place showing in the 100 butterfly earlier this weekend. In his final collegiate event, he fell just shy of Brian Retterer's 1995 school record with a time of 1:40.07. He bettered his best by .01 second, still second all-time. Freshman Matt Thompson came back to win the 200 backstroke consolation finals with a time of 1:41.54, ranking No. 8 all-time in school history.
Godsoe finished his career with 52 points in his final NCAAs for 112 combined points, 28th-best all-time at Stanford.
Bollier and David Mosko, the school's top two 200 flyers of all-time, also finished neck-and-neck in the finals, as Bollier improved his school record from 1:41.79 to 1:41.54, while Mosko was fourth with a mark of 1:42.99.
Stanford closed out the event, third in the 400 freestyle relay, as David Dunford, in his final collegiate event, swam the anchor leg. Dunford also finished fifth in the 100 freestyle with a mark of 42.60, after racing to a time of 42.21 in the preliminaries, ranking him No. 3 school-history. Alex Coville was also an All-American, finishing 13th (43.11).
Curtis Lovelace reached the finals of the 200 breaststroke, finishing sixth with a time of 1:54.37 after a personal-best 1:54.25 in the prelims, still fifth-best all-time.
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