This weekend, Bassi also competed in the 500-yard freestyle. In the preliminaries, Bassi swam a time a 4:52.92 for a 47th-place finish. While she did not make the finals, she did improve on her ranking from her seeded position of 51st. Bassi qualified with her school-record breaking time of 4:50.78.

Bassi would then have swum in the 400-yard individual medley on day two but since she made the A-cut for the 200-yard butterfly event and only the B-cut for the 400-yard medley, she choose not to swim the event in order to be better prepared for her better event on the final day.

“I wanted to concentrate on fewer events than I did at Ivies,” Bassi wrote. “So I decided it would be in my best interest to rest on Friday.”

Pangilinan’s second race was the 100-yard breaststroke, her second best of the two breaststroke events. She finished in 37th. Pangilinan was ranked 49th going into the race with a seed time of 1:03.65, and although her time in the preliminaries was a slower 1:04.00, she did improve her position by 12 spots.

It was Pangilinan’s first trip to the NCAA Championships. But the veteran Bassi was impressed with the freshman’s performance.

“As a freshman, [Pangilinan] didn’t know what to expect, and she did an amazing job handling her nerves,” Bassi wrote. “She is such a hard worker and while I know she will go faster in future seasons, she did really well.”

—Staff writer Abigail M. Baird can be reached at ambaird@fas.harvard.edu.