Last lap

One may be swimming the last meet of her college career, the other may be simply gaining momentum for her last year as a Cougar. Ultimately, both want to qualify for this year’s Pac-12 Championships.

Senior Emma Johansson and junior Alison Mand seek to triumph in this week’s Pac-12 Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships held in Federal Way, Wash. The tournament begins today and ends Saturday.  

“For the team, we’ve had a great season, we’ve never been better I would say,” said Johansson. “It’s hard to win against the best teams in the nation, but we’re doing so much better. Two years ago (Cal) completely destroyed us, this year, we scored way more points.”

Mand said she sees continuing a strong team work ethic as a way of gaining momentum entering the Pac-12s.  

Individually, Johansson has one goal, and that is to swim at the NCAAs.

 “I think I’ve matured a little bit in my swimming and I’ve learned that the focus is on the last meet of the season,” Johansson said. “Basically, it’s all about how I swim at Pac-12s and NCAAs.”

This week Johansson will be performing in the 50 freestyle, 100 fly, and in the 100 back-stroke. Mand will also be performing in the same competitions as Johansson, but will decide on possibly switching the 100 back-stroke to race in the 100 free Sunday.

As a team they hope to qualify in the freestyle relay.

“It’s my last year, I’ve never made it before and I would love to see our freestyle relay make it to the NCAAs as well,” Johansson said. “That would be awesome, we haven’t had a relay team make it in I don’t know how long.”

With one year left to compete, Mand set her sights breaking records.

“I want to use this meet as a jumping-off point for my senior year and get some momentum going into it,” Mand said. “What I do in this meet hopefully exceeds all expectations.”

Johansson said after her final season she plans to swim back home in hopes of making the European Championships.

Both Johansson and Mand rely on motivators to hopefully move on to the NCAAs. While Mand uses close competitions against the best in the league to inspire her, Johansson has a little bit more to prompt her.

Her parents and younger sister are flying in from Sweden to watch her swim, something Johansson considers very special.

As the team prepares for the final hoorah, they reflect on the influence of their head coach Tom Jager. Due to Jager’s work the team has built chemistry as well as confidence.

“I think Tom is really great teaching us about, how to be good people,” Johansson said. “It’s not all about swimming, you have a life after swimming and I think he sets a great example.”

Of the team’s cohesiveness, Johansson said they do a good job of supporting one another especially since athletes tend to put pressure on themselves.

“What I’ve learned most this year is to really work from a place of confidence,” Mand said. “We’ve always talked about confidence and poise going together and all of that comes from hard work. And I think those are two things you have to have in order to succeed, which applies to everything else.”

Looking forward, Mand highlighted training as a key factor in building on the team’s success. She knows they have new fast swimmers coming in and she’s excited to see how they contribute to the squad.