Sitting stiffly on a wooden bench, heavy head resting in her damp hands, the tired swimmer closed her eyes and wondered how, in a locker room full of teammates—beneath a packed swim stadium with thousands of eyes preparing to gaze upon her—she could feel so desperately alone.
She had never been this miserable, even during her darkest day with the Terrapins or the most acute stretch of shoulder trauma. The pain she felt right now was something worse, a hollow numbness that was equal parts depression and disbelief. How can this be happening? she wondered over and over. She hadn’t slept more than an uninterrupted hour for the past two nights, and as much as her arms and legs hurt from her having exerted herself in the water, her heart ached even more.
It occurred to her that it was Valentine’s Day, a thought so absurd it almost provoked laughter. Almost. Laughter would not have played well in this locker room, not with a group of swimmers who had been so sure they were ready to vanquish their archrivals and now were coming to terms with the brutal reality that it wasn’t going to happen.
The final dual meet of Natalie Coughlin’s unrivaled career had been playing out at the Avery Aquatic Center for nearly 2 hours now, and here, during the second diving break, the math was not in Cal’s favor. Only two events remained, and Stanford’s swimmers had already started openly celebrating a 28th consecutive victory in the Big Meet. For a few moments there was a sunken silence, a collective resignation among two dozen deflated swimmers. And then, from the lone man in the room, came a strange shout of defiance.
“They’re out there acting like they’ve already won, but it’s not over,” Whitney Hite barked, his words reverberating through the room. “You can still do this. You will do this. We’re just so damn close. Do not give up.”
The Bears perked up, energized by the strand of hope that still existed, if only in a technical sense. Their insolent assistant coach began laying out the numbers, explaining precisely what they’d need to do to win. Finally, Coughlin opened her eyes, bit down on her lower lip, and marched quietly out of the locker room with her teammates. She wasn’t sure she believed Hite, but at least his words had distracted her. And right now, anything that took her mind off her misery was far better than the bitter alternative.
Buoyed by a hearty cheer from the huge assemblage in the stands behind their side of the pool deck, the Bears congregated and psyched themselves up one last time. Senior cocaptain Natalie Griffith, who was about to swim the 400-meter individual medley, was wide-eyed as she walked to the starting blocks, looking as if, in teammate Lauren Medina’s words, she had seen a ghost. Standing behind the blocks as she waited to lead off the meet’s final event, the 400-meter freestyle relay, which would take place immediately after the 400 IM, Coughlin stepped forward and put her hands on Griffith’s shoulders. The two Natalies had never been particularly close, but now, on the verge of suffering yet another disappointment against the team they detested most, their bond was palpable.
“I can’t believe we’re gonna lose to them again,” Coughlin said between F-bombs. “But if we’re gonna lose, let’s go down swinging.”
“Hell yeah,” said Griffith, snapping out of her daze.
“Hell yeah,” echoed Coughlin. “Go get ’em.”
How had it come to this? The Bears trailed 140–124 with two events to go and Stanford needing a mere 11 points to clinch the victory, and none of the Cal swimmers, or their coaches, could figure out how it had happened. Sure, there was the diving disparity, and Stanford, in sisters Tara and Dana Kirk, had two of the best swimmers in the country. But the Bears, in the very fibers of their being, were convinced they were the deeper, tougher, more resilient squad that was destined to prevail. They had never been more motivated—they’d been talking about this moment for months, and their team meeting two nights earlier had been nothing short of surreal.
On a clear Friday night in Berkeley, the swimmers had gathered in the Grille Room at Haas Pavilion to make collages containing their favorite memories of the season, one of those touchy-feely activities of which McKeever was so fond. When they were finished, the coach stood up and told her swimmers how much she cared for them and admired the sacrifices they’d made to that point.
Then McKeever said, “I know how much this meet means to you, and I know that if we win, you’re going to want to celebrate. You’re going to want to go on and on until midnight, when we all know that would be inappropriate.” She paused, and then, to everyone’s amazement, added: “When we win this meet, you’re going to have to celebrate a hell of a lot later than that.”
Some swimmers howled in approval; others merely sat there open-mouthed. Teri’s telling us to party! McKeever, a woman who didn’t drink, whose father had been killed by a drunk driver, who normally would have implored her swimmers to get a good night’s sleep a mere 12 days before the start of the Pac-10 Championships, was encouraging a celebration that had been a long time coming.
If the swimmers hadn’t known before how much this meet meant to their coach, they did now. The older ones had seen firsthand how desperately she wanted to defeat Stanford—and the younger ones were well familiar with the story of Cal’s last visit there 2 years earlier. The two teams were locked in a typically tight contest when Richard Quick, the Cardinal’s legendary coach, engaged in a bit of gamemanship that enraged his Cal counterpart. Stanford’s senior cocaptain Jessica Foschi, a talented distance swimmer from New York with loads of international racing experience, was swimming back-to-back events, the 1,000- and 200-yard freestyles. Foschi won the 1,000 free, but instead of getting out and walking to the warm-down pool with the other swimmers, she continued swimming in the competition pool and warmed down as the slower finishers completed their laps. This, McKeever felt, was clearly unfair; she also believed Quick, with whom she had a good relationship, had intentionally entered an exceptionally slow swimmer in the 1,000 so that the race would take longer to complete, thus ensuring that Foschi had ample warm-down time before the 200.
As she saw what was happening, McKeever boiled over. She started running up the pool deck, pointed at Quick, and screamed, “That’s b.s., Richard!”(She might have included a profanity or two, but that was the gist.) Avery Aquatic Center grew quiet—swimmers, parents, fans, and even recruits of both schools were stunned by McKeever’s rage. She couldn’t help it. In a system she knew was already stacked against her team, the thought of Quick’s resorting to such rule-bending tricks put McKeever over the edge.
Foschi finished second to Coughlin in the 200, and the Bears lost the meet by a 159.5-to-140.5 score as Cal’s diving deficit once again proved to be the difference. The two coaches patched up their differences on deck, with Quick telling McKeever, “I didn’t mean to do anything out of line,” and McKeever responding, “I respect you too much to even get into this with you. The reality is that you have a better team than I do right now; you don’t need to play games.”
Rather than scorn their coach’s emotional outburst, the Bear swimmers embraced it as a sign of McKeever’s fallibility and competitiveness. Soon the coach cracked up at the sight of the team’s latest T-shirt design—with McKeever’s off-color quote embossed on the back.
It would be hard to imagine a similar display of frivolity at Stanford, where Quick’s manic intensity set a daunting tone. Coughlin, in fact, had gleefully discovered a photo of Quick in one of her psychology textbooks, included in the middle of a chapter on anger management. The caption began: “People with a type A personality—those who are impatient, competitive, and hostile…” It went on to note a correlation between those with type A personalities and heart disease. Coughlin quickly photocopied the page and placed it on Cal’s growing locker room bulletin board.
Though cast as the villain, Quick wasn’t a one-dimensional autocrat. His detractors (Coughlin and McKeever ultimately not among them) blasted his propensity for coaching to his stars and, they charged, ignoring the majority of his rank-and-file swimmers. They viewed him as a humorless taskmaster who cared only about results and failed to develop anyone who didn’t share his swimming-is-life mentality. Yet Quick’s coaching talent was undeniable: The man had won 12 NCAA Championships (six with Texas, six with Stanford), had placed in the top three every year from 1983 through 2002, and had been part of the past five US Olympic coaching staffs, including three times as head coach. To his credit, he was one of the few figures in his sport—along with McKeever—who looked outside the normal channels for means of improving their swimmers. It was he, remember, who had hired Milt Nelms in the first place, before the stroke guru became a confidant of McKeever. In fact, as Nelms and others would attest, Quick, if anything, was too far out there when it came to alternative approaches. The man was like an old-fashioned salesman, espousing snake oil as the wonder drug and actually believing in its healing power.
One afternoon in September of 2004, while dining at a taqueria near his Irvine, California, headquarters, Novaquatics coach Dave Salo picked up a bottle of Cholula Hot Sauce when asked to assess Quick’s coaching style. “This makes you faster,” Salo said, shaking the bottle. Then, picking up a glass of iced tea with his other hand, Salo said, “And this.” He put down the hot sauce and the tea and picked up a salt shaker. “This, too. Put ’em all on you, and you’ll be unbeatable.”
Witnesses said that at the 2004 Olympics, when Quick was named to the US staff for the sixth time, as a women’s assistant, he had his current and former Stanford swimmers sleeping underneath a magnetic triangle in an attempt to channel their energy. He would also cause a miniscandal after the 2004 Trials, when it was revealed that six Stanford swimmers in Long Beach had been spotted with small patches affixed to their shoulders, a practice that apparently had also occurred during the Cal-Stanford meet. In the wake of the BALCO steroid scandal, which had emanated from a laboratory just up Highway 101 from Palo Alto, the revelation about the patches was not welcome publicity for US swimming. The patch, known as the LifeWave Energy Enhancer, was said by one coach to contain testosterone. Quick denied that the patches were illegal, and no evidence was ever uncovered to substantiate the accusations. Quick explained to the San Francisco Chronicle that the patches were designed to electronically stimulate acupuncture points, inserting current into the body to help improve an athlete’s stamina. “We’re not trying to hide anything,” Quick told the newspaper, “because it was out there in broad daylight.” He said he was “known as a coach who tries to leave no stone unturned in how to improve in a safe, healthy, legal way.”
Quick certainly had been aboveboard when it came to preparing for the Cal-Stanford dual. Earlier in the week, he had called McKeever and broached the subject of whether the teams should wear Fastskins, the Speedo-manufactured body suits that cut down on water resistance and theoretically produced faster times. Quick could simply have had his swimmers wear the suits and potentially caught the Bears unawares, but he wanted a level playing field. McKeever, mindful that only four Stanford swimmers had made their NCAA qualifying cuts, an alarmingly low total to that point, agreed that swimmers for both teams could feel free to wear the Fastskins.
To her, it would make the meet that much more special. She had played out various scenarios in her mind, trying to plot the optimal lineup for victory, and no matter which way she tried it, Cal’s potential winning margin was thin. Coughlin had suggested she swim the 200 free as one of her events, but McKeever convinced her otherwise, instead penciling in her star for the 50 and 100 frees and the 100 fly. That meant Lauren Medina would have to beat Stanford’s star freestyler, Lacey Boutwell, in the 200 free. “Lauren can do it,” McKeever said. “She has to, because it’s tough to see us winning otherwise.”
If the Bears were to lose, it would not be for want of motivation. A little more than a month earlier, upon arriving in Australia, they had been a fractured unit rife with jealousy and internal backbiting. Now they were battle tested and united in a quest to make a historic and symbolic stand. Only twice had Cal defeated Stanford in women’s swimming, and not since 1976. A victory not only would be a huge boost for the program but also would be heralded by the campus community in general.
On an across-the-board level, the Cal-Stanford rivalry, once reasonably civil, had heated up in recent years, especially as the Cardinal won seven consecutive football games from 1995 to 2001 and made a landmark Rose Bowl appearance in January 2000. As the millennium approached, it appeared as though Stanford had the upper hand in everything. At one point Stanford won 10 consecutive games in men’s basketball, 15 straight in women’s hoops. The Cardinal athletic department was being hailed as the model of comprehensive excellence augmented by academic accountability. The school had the greatest sugar daddy in the history of college sports, real estate magnate John Arrillaga, who gave millions to the athletic department. The school went out and hired the finest coaches in every sport and had won the Directors (née Sears) Cup—a points system designed to quantify across-the-board athletic success—each year of the award’s existence.
Golfer Tiger Woods, the world’s most successful athlete, proudly wore a bloodred shirt on Sundays of majors to honor his Stanford heritage—he had attended school there and played on the golf team for 2 years before turning pro. Chelsea Clinton, the president’s daughter, had gone there. The school was in the heart of the Silicon Valley in the midst of a dotcom boom that was the modern-day gold rush.
For Cal fans, it was as if they had been forced to view the world through Cardinal-colored glasses.
Lately, however, the earth had begun to look a bit bluer. The turning point, most Cal fans felt, had come in the spring of 2001, when then-Stanford rugby coach Franck Boivert sent an e-mail to his Cal counterpart, Jack Clark, claiming his players had voted to forfeit the team’s annual match because “they do not have the heart to play against a team vastly superior to them in size, weight, and speed.” At the time the Bears and coach Jack Clark had won 10 consecutive national championships (en route to capturing 12 straight titles), but Stanford’s refusal to play was appalling. The Cardinal had beaten Cal as recently as 1996, and the forfeit ended an unbroken 110-year tradition of annual meetings. More important to Cal fans, Stanford’s wimpiness—especially in such a macho sport—spoke to everything they loathed about the institution. It was as if the Cardinal credo were, “If we can beat you, we’ll play. But if we can’t, we’ll take our ball and go home.”
Now Cal, under hot new football coach Jeff Tedford, had won two consecutive Big Games, giving the school ownership of “the Axe” and its fans a newfound swagger. Golden Bear teams were beginning to break through in numerous sports, and the end to the women’s swimming streak would be another sign that the balance of power was tilting to the east side of San Francisco Bay.
To Coughlin, all of this mattered—and so much more. To her, Stanford was akin to the swimming establishment, a viewpoint bolstered by the school’s state-of-the-art facilities and stable of former age-group champions and elite recruits. Cal, by comparison, was the heart of the revolution, a chaotic home to new ideas, free will, and self-motivated scrappers. It was private school versus public school; spacious, country-club-like campus versus thriving, diverse urban university.
It was no coincidence, she felt, that the most magical moment in the history of the spirited cross-Bay rivalry had been so singular, strange, and sublime: the legendary finish of the 1982 Big Game in Berkeley, in which Cal’s Kevin Moen began and ended a five-lateral kickoff return by racing through the Stanford band, crushing a trombone player’s instrument as he leaped over the goal line. “The Play” not only stood as the most thrilling finish in college football history but also spoke to the creativity, spontaneity, and out-of-the-box thinking that Coughlin loved about her university. If Stanford was a sheltered enclave of theoretical musings, Cal was the real world.
There is an old saying that sums up the differences between the two schools: At Stanford, they teach you to wash your hands after you urinate. At Cal, they tell you not to piss on your hands.
Stanfordites, Coughlin believed, were the type of people who’d walk into a party, linger near the back wall, and observe from a safe distance, judging the behavior of those in the center of the action. And Cal people? They were the party, decorum be damned. They were like her maternal grandfather, Chuck Bohn, an ex-Marine with a booming voice and an equally conspicuous stuffed-bear hat who was prone to screaming “Go Bears!” during those tense, quiet moments just before the sounding of the starting gun.
Cal fans, in short, weren’t afraid to throw themselves out there, no matter how much they might be scrutinized. Nor, apparently, were Cal assistant coaches—as the swimmers were about to find out.
Whitney Hite’s impact on the Bears during his 9 months in Berkeley had been significant, but sensitivity was not regarded as one of his prime assets. Hite had been tough, in both demeanor and assignments, and he hadn’t acted particularly worried about whether his swimmers regarded him as overly brusque or demanding.
Now, however, as the Bears sat in the Haas Grille Room the night before the Stanford meet, they saw an unexpected vulnerability as Hite stood up to address the team.
Almost as soon as he started speaking, Hite choked up. “When I got here, you were a bunch of individuals,” he said. “But you’ve worked hard for a common goal, and you’ve become a team. We’ve challenged you to put in the work it takes to be great, and you’ve stepped up to that challenge. This is the proudest I’ve ever been of any group of athletes in my life. I completely believe in you and what you’re about to do.” He paused, and his eyes got moist. Oh my God, Lauren Medina remembers thinking, he has a soul! No one on the team could believe it—Hite, the demanding deck demon, had started to cry.
The meeting broke up, and Coughlin drove home to Emeryville, where she fielded a phone call from Ethan Hall. From the second she answered the phone, Coughlin could tell that something wasn’t right. The two were working through issues in their relationship, and the conversation put her in the deep funk that had carried over to the meet. The fact that it took place on Valentine’s Day—and that Hall was not in attendance—only depressed her further.
The rest of the Bears were unaware of Coughlin’s misery. To them, it was “Cal-entine’s Day,” the inscription on the homemade pins Coughlin’s mother, Zennie, was passing out to the fans on the west side of the Avery Aquatic Center. A record 1,784 fans showed up for the meet, with spectators evenly split between the two teams: red-clad rooters on the east side of the stands, their blue-and-gold counterparts staring back from the opposite end.
Technically, it was Stanford’s swim stadium, but that didn’t stop the Bears from acting as if they owned the place. They strode into the pool with a boom box blasting Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body,” dancing and strutting and having fun. Just before the meet began, the Cal swimmers, as was their custom, belted out an a cappella rendition of “Big C,” one of the school fight songs—and marveled as hundreds of Golden Bear fans stood and joined them. “I remember looking up in the stands and seeing all the people and thinking, ‘Do you really like swimming that much?’ ” Medina recalls. “It was Valentine’s Day—I assumed people would be off with their honeys.”
Stanford, however, struck the first emotional blow. It came at Medina’s expense, in the 200 free, the event McKeever felt the Bears had to have. The Cardinal, as expected, had won the meet-opening 200-meter medley relay, with the Kirk sisters, in the breaststroke and butterfly respectively, providing a decisive edge. Cal struck back in the 800 free as Ashley Chandler, now swimming with authority, and Erin Reilly seized command from the start and finished 1–2. This marked another step in McKeever and Hite’s quest to get Reilly to face up to her potential as a swimmer. As a youth swimmer, Reilly had gone to distance camp with Stanford freshman Lauren Costella, who went on to become a two-time national champion in the 1,500 free. Yet when the coaches had scored out the meet beforehand, they had Reilly beating Costella in the both the 400 and 800 free. “Lauren Costella?” Reilly had exclaimed. “She’s gonna be tough.” McKeever grimaced—the last thing she needed was a star-struck freshman before the biggest dual meet of the season. “Erin,” McKeever said, “you’re going to beat her.” Reilly did, by more than 8 seconds.
Then came the 200 free, which looked great from the Cal perspective for about 170 meters. Medina had charged to the lead and looked stronger than Boutwell, a terrific finisher, until the Cal swimmer headed into the final turn. Then, suddenly, the panic symptoms that had afflicted her at Princeton began to return. She breathed just before the wall, turned sluggishly, and gave an opening to Boutwell, who charged from behind and won by 0.34 second. Medina, convinced she’d let down the team, was crushed; senior Micha Burden, who’d swum to an underwhelming sixth-place finish, was even more visibly dejected.
Cal’s spirits were quickly buoyed by Helen Silver, who rolled to a decisive victory in the 100 back. Silver had planned on racing Stanford’s Kristen Caverly, a talented and versatile swimmer whom she had defeated in both backstroke events the previous year at Cal. The statuesque Caverly, who would make the 2004 Olympic team in the 200-meter backstroke, had been sidelined by a back injury, but she was suited up in a one-piece for the Cal meet—as a decoy, it turned out, courtesy of some borderline gamesmanship by Quick. Momentarily let down by Caverly’s absence, Silver took out her frustration on Stanford senior Megan Baumgartner, winning by more than 2 seconds.
Then it was Kirk time—Tara winning the 100 breast easily and Dana capturing the 200 fly even more decisively, with Chandler and Reilly going 2–3. Finally, it was time for Coughlin to enter the water for the 50 free. More vulnerable in a short race, Coughlin removed all doubt by crushing Boutwell with a time of 24.60 seconds—an NCAA record and just 0.08 second shy of former Stanford star Jenny Thompson’s American record. She dusted Boutwell again in the 100 free, and then Silver won the 200 back by nearly a second and a half.
Tara Kirk and Stanford teammate Kristen Gilbert finished first and second in the 200 breast, but Chandler and Reilly pulled off another 1–2 effort in the 400 free, with Cal sophomore Kate Tiedeman, a Palo Alto Swim Club alum competing in her hometown, sneaking past the Cardinal’s Evins Cameron in the final few meters to capture fourth—and the two points (as opposed to one for fifth place) that went with it. Numerous Cal swimmers had ventured over to Lane 1, right beside the Stanford bench area, to cheer Tiedeman home, and with good reason: The Bears would need every point they could muster to have any chance of winning. Despite the slew of impressive efforts, Cal was losing the numbers game.
“I know we’re going to win,” Hite kept telling the Bears and McKeever. “I just don’t know how.”
Even after Coughlin held off Dana Kirk to win a surprisingly close 100 fly—her winning time of 56.64 seconds was an NCAA record and just 0.3 second off her world record—the Bears were in a bind. Stanford had mitigated the damage by finishing second, third, and fourth. When the 3-meter diving scores were added—the Cardinal (surprise, surprise) had finished first, second, and third, as it had in the 1-meter competition staged earlier—the home team had a 140–124 edge.
As they emerged from the locker room for the final two events, the Stanford swimmers looked elated and relieved. They had survived another stiff challenge from their rivals, and the streak was safe. There were hugs and high fives and hoots of approval from the Stanford side of the stadium. Needing just 11 points to clinch the meet, the Cardinal figured to get all of them in the 400 IM (individual events awarded nine points for first, four for second, three for third, two for fourth, and one for fifth), with juniors Tami Ransom, Cameron, Costella, and Coughlin’s old Terrapins teammate Laura Davis as its entries. The Bears, meanwhile, would send a far less distinguished cast to the blocks: Griffith; fellow captain Amy Ng, a junior; struggling junior Jenna Rais; and Tiedeman, a moonlighting distance freestyler.
This was when the two Natalies, Coughlin and Griffith, were huddled together at the blocks, bemoaning their predicament. Up in the stands above them, a third Natalie was also coming to terms with Cal’s imminent defeat.
“Sweetie,” I said softly, placing my hand on top of my 7-year-old daughter’s blue Cal cap. “It’s not looking too good for the Bears.”
Natalie Silver was not so easy to convince. “You mean it’s over?” she asked incredulously.
“No, sweetie, not yet. But almost. And I don’t think there’s any way we can score enough points to win.”
Having indoctrinated my little girl into a life of Golden Bear worship from a painfully young age—one of the first phrases out of her mouth was “Stanford PU,” the result of having a demented father and a fellow Cal alum for a mother too distracted to protest—I felt obligated to come up with a scenario to appease her. The best I could do was something far too radical to work: Throw Coughlin into the 400 IM as a desperation move and pray that the Bears could win the 400-free relay without her. On deck, Hite and McKeever were discussing another drastic possibility: splitting up the A and B relay teams in an attempt to take first and second. McKeever was also thinking about what she’d say to her swimmers after another piercing disappointment; it was tough to envision any other outcome.
Natalie Silver, however, had a plan. The little lady was having a grand old time at the meet, having heard her name (what with the two Natalies and Helen Silver, to whom she bore no relation, in multiple races) mentioned over the PA system every few minutes. She did not intend to have it end on a downer. “This is my lucky hat,” she proclaimed, removing her Cal cap and waving it vigorously. “Remember, Daddy?” It was true: At the previous November’s Big Game at Stanford, Natalie’s decision to turn the same cap backward had coincided directly with Cal’s comeback from a 10–0 halftime deficit for a 28–16 victory. “If I wave it,” she said simply, “we’ll win.”
The gun sounded, and Stanford’s Ransom, an accomplished back-stroker, shot to the front. But Griffith stayed with her and caught her at the 100-meter mark, with the Cardinal’s Cameron in hot pursuit. Ransom and Cameron pulled ahead, but Griffith remained close, and the Bears’ Ng made a spirited charge. Watching from the deck, McKeever felt a tingle through her spine. Something strange was happening. Where was Davis (a talented IMer who would end up finishing 13th in this very event at NCAAs the following month)? And what in the world was Ng doing so close to the lead?
In her role as captain, Ng, a popular junior, had sometimes butted heads with McKeever, and there had been a measure of tension in their relationship. Right now, however, McKeever was aglow over what she was witnessing in the water. During the breaststroke laps, as Griffith pulled into the lead, Ng, as if tethered to the senior, charged right along with her. McKeever clapped her hands together nervously—the versatile swimmer from San Ramon was swimming the race of her life!
Now it was freestyle time, and Griffith was only getting stronger. Suddenly, she was the hotshot teeanger from Virginia once again, swimming a variety of strokes with authority while spectators marveled at her skills. Ng wasn’t backing off, either—the Bears, somehow, were going to finish 1–2. Yet over in Lane 1, as the final laps played out, someone was moving even faster. Tiedeman, known for her even-paced distance swims, was knifing through the water like an accomplished sprinter, making a run at Davis for fifth. Griffith had already touched the wall and was heading over to embrace Ng when they heard the roar—Tiedeman had gotten the essential fifth-place point and had nearly caught Cameron for fourth.
Throughout the stadium, graduates and students of two of the nation’s most prestigious universities were doing some quick math in their heads: Stanford’s lead was now just 145–138. If Cal could win the relay (11 points) and take third with its B team (2 points), the Bears would win the meet; anything less would mean a Stanford victory.
Everyone in the Cal section stood up and yelled, as did the fired-up swimmers; this was their time, and they knew it. Momentarily stunned into silence, the Stanford fans and swimmers soon followed suit. It was a gorgeous, sunny afternoon that featured college athletics at its finest, and it would all come down to one thrilling race.
Coughlin had waited too long for this opportunity to allow even a shred of hope to her opponents. She burst off the blocks and immediately seized control, swimming her 100 meters in an NCAA record 52.97 seconds—just 0.05 second slower than Jenny Thompson’s American record. As long as no one left early, the Bears had first place locked up, especially with Medina anchoring.
Meanwhile, the pivotal battle for third was playing out, with Cal’s Chandler and Reilly each securing a slight lead over the Cardinal’s Ashley Daly and Sarah Jones, respectively. But in the third leg, Stanford freshman Lisa Falzone caught and passed the Bears’ Palsson, and anchor Morgan Hentzen entered the water with a ½-second edge on Keiko Amano.
For a few seconds, every Cal fan’s heart sank. It was as if this one relay leg symbolized the vast differences between the two programs. On paper, it was no contest: Hentzen, a decorated, powerful swimmer with extensive international experience (she had won the 800 free and finished second in the 400 free at the 2003 Pan American Games) against Amano, the throwaway recruit whom the Bears had left temporarily stranded in San Francisco. Visually, it was even more of a mismatch: Hentzen was 6 inches taller than the 5-foot-2 Amano and looked to be adding to the Stanford lead with every stroke.
The Cal swimmers, however, knew better. They’d learned about Amano’s heart and poise during her meet-clinching swim against Arizona 3 weeks earlier; now, even as she trailed coming out of the first turn at 25 meters, they knew she had a shot. “Come on, Keiko—run her down!” Coughlin screamed. Stay with your technique, McKeever thought, holding her breath. Hentzen, a distance swimmer, was unlikely to run out of gas, but if Amano could resist the temptation to thrash, her exceptional form could allow her to prevail.
On the second lap, Amano made her run. She pulled nearly even coming into the turn, and as the two swimmers pushed off the wall in unison, somehow the short one catapulted to the front. Now the rest of the Bears were screaming, clutching each other like blankets on a freezing night. Hentzen tried to charge, but Amano kept building momentum, and now she was drawing out. One last turn, and her lead remained intact. Hentzen made a final push in the last 25 meters, but Amano stayed a full second ahead. When she touched the wall, a deafening roar echoed across the stadium. There wasn’t a single dry eye among the jubilant Cal contingent.
After the victory became official, most of the Bears jumped into the pool to mob Amano, though McKeever resisted being thrown in herself. The swimmers celebrated instead by singing an encore rendition of “Big C,” chanting “Un-de-feat-ed,” and savoring what surely was the greatest dual-meet victory in school history. Cal had done the near impossible, fighting back to win the meet by a 151–149 score.
There would be a party in Berkeley that night, and the Bears and their friends on the men’s swim team would toast McKeever for helping to inspire it.
That night, at halftime of Cal’s sold-out basketball game against Stanford at Haas—alas, those Bears would fall short in their bid to upset the second-ranked Cardinal—McKeever and Hite stood in a corridor and recounted the wild events of the afternoon. “I was devastated when Lauren lost the 200,” McKeever admitted, “but it’s not like she tanked. She swam a 1:58.7, which is the fifth-fastest time in the country. I mean, Whitney: Lauren Medina has the fifth-fastest time in the country. Think about that.”
A few miles away in Emeryville, the heartsick Coughlin was still out of sorts. After the meet, she and teammates Burden, Palsson, and Miller had gone shopping in San Francisco—and Coughlin purchased a $400 powder-blue Coach purse in an attempt to cheer herself up. It wasn’t really working. But as she went to bed that night and closed her eyes, one of the last things she saw before drifting off was the Avery Aquatic Center scoreboard and the immaculate 151 on the Cal side.
If that didn’t make her smile, nothing could have.