Arizona’s Kevin Cordes has been named the Pac-12 Swimmer of the Month for January, with another successful month that should stoke him forward toward even more-prestigious national awards in March, if all goes according to plan.
Cordes has not lost a breaststroke race all season long, and last month he won both the 100 and the 200 against a lethal top-10 trio of Stanford, Cal, and Texas (though in fairness, those happen to be three teams whose weakest strokes are probably breaststroke).
This is the third consecutive month in which Cordes has won the Pac-12 award, which has never been done by a male swimmer before, and is his 6th career win, which is also a new Pac-12 Record.
He is not the only Wildcat to wind up on the conference’s monthly laud-report. Diver Rafael Quintero took his 2nd career Pac-12 Diver of the Month award in January, following a win in November earlier this season. He swept the springboard events against Cal, was 2nd in both events against Stanford, and was 2nd on the 3-meter and 3rd on the 1-meter against Texas.
Quintero won the award over Stanford’s Kristian Ipsen, despite Ipsen beating Quintero head-to-head at the teams’ dual meets in both disciplines. Ipsen was likely docked because he only dove in one of Stanford’s three meets in January (including the Pacific dual, in which there was no diving).