Cal’s women’s swimming & diving team has added another recruit to its roster for the 2017-18 season with the signing of Sarah Darcel from Victoria, British Columbia, to a National Letter of Intent Tuesday.
A member of Canada’s national team for the FINA World Swimming Championships (25 meters) this past December, Darcel will represent Canada at the World University Games in Taipei, Taiwan, this coming August.
“Sarah is a very versatile, smart swimmer who should make a wonderful addition to our team,” head coach Teri McKeever said. “She just did a great job at Canada’s World Championships Trials, making their World University Games team for this summer. We look forward to Sarah joining our program.”
Darcel competed in all three individual medley events at short-course worlds in December, finishing sixth in the 200-meter IM (2:08.59), 10th in the 100 IM (1:00.06) and 10th in the 400 IM (4:35.66). She also swam in the prelims of the 200 free relay that later won a gold medal.
Darcel captured individual gold of her own in the 400 IM at the 2016 Junior Pan Pacific Championships in Maui last August, touching the wall in 4:39.83. In addition, she earned silver medals after swimming the anchor leg on Canada’s 400 free relay and 400 medley relay, while taking fourth in the 200 IM and seventh in the 200 butterfly.
At the 2016 Canadian Olympic Trials, Darcel placed fourth in the 200 IM and fifth in the 400 IM, and also competed in the backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly events.
Darcel becomes the 11th member of Cal’s recruiting class for next season, joining a group that signed with the Bears in the fall. (See our articles on Alexandra Skorus-Neely, Ali Harrison, Briana Thai, Dannie Dilsaver, Elizabeth Bailey, Jackie Im, Kathleen Navas, Natalie Tuck, Robin Neumann, Sophie Krivokapic-Zhou. As a team, Cal is coming off a runner-up finish at the NCAA Championships – the ninth year in a row the Bears have placed among the top three nationally.
Link to release: http://calbea.rs/2opQ
If you have a commitment to report, please send an email with a photo (landscape, or horizontal, looks best) and a quote to [email protected]
Still no great 100 breast talent? It’s been a while since Cal doesn’t have a top breaststroker in its team. Since Caitlin Leverenz.
Popov, Walsh, Bartel, Weiss or Raab will be on the market soon. Maybe Cal can grab one of them in the next few years.
On the other hand I doubt that a young breaststroker with a bright international future thinks about Cal as a first choice, a place where there’s not much recent success with women’s breaststroke. Unlike Indiana for example which seems to be at the top of the list right now but also USC, Stanford, Tennessee, Louisville, Minnesota, Texas A&M and maybe a few others I don’t have in mind.
Nikol Popov is in the class of 2017 and she already committed to Tennessee. Great get. Stanford had Grace Zhao for the 2017 class. Hope the Heidi Poppe will come back to her high school form next year. Then Stanford can have Williams, Poppe and Zhao for Breastroke group.
does it make a difference ? Stanford is still going to win by over 200 points ?
Funny how the kal coach try to cover up consecative class of nobodys
thru overpaying all there foreign mercenarys
Meehan recruit genuine home grown talent only
no wonder everybodys whose somebody wanna swim for him
Stanford already boast the #1 class in 2014 2016 2017
gonna repeat in 2018 with Ruck Merell Bartel Bayer practicaly on board
Spoken like a true Trump supporter who can’t spell either!
Ease up cowboy, why don’t you let 2018 make their own decisions.
A breaststroker! I think Cal found the missing piece to the puzzle.
I think she’s better at the 200, though
True that Darcel’s capable of scoring in the 200 Br (B final) if her converted 2:09.49 holds for her future SCY performances.
But incoming Bear Harrison’s gone faster in the 100 distance, as has Roses, Weitzeil & Blovad. No Cal woman eligible to swim @ 2018 NCAA’s currently holds a PR that would have made the invite cutoff time for 2017 in the 100 Br, except for Baker.
Darcel’s value for Cal lies more in her IM skills I think. She can score in both the 200 (B final?) & 400 (may be the only Cal scorer there next year).
Hopefully she will help Cal with their breaststroke and IM.
The IM that “only” WON the 200 at NCAAs this year???
400… and she will add more points.