Head Shots of the CMS Women's Swimming and Diving Class of 2021

Video Tribute: The CMS Women's Swimming and Diving Class of 2021

As part of NCAA Division III week (Apr. 5-11), we will be honoring the senior classes for all 21 of our varsity sports. A number of our student-athletes elected to take a semester or a school year off and could return to action next season, but we have chosen to honor the senior classes as they would have been, without the COVID-19 interruption. The members of the Class of 2021 lost so much of what they had built towards in their first 2-3 years of competition when the pandemic hit, but still clearly left their mark on CMS Athletics.


CMS Women's Swimming and Diving celebrating its 2020 SCIAC title CLAREMONT, Calif. - The CMS Women's Swimming and Diving Class of 2021 accomplished a key goal in 2020, before the shutdown of athletics just weeks later.

For their first two seasons, the Athenas had finished as a close runner-up in the SCIAC Championships. As a program with a rich history of 19 SCIAC titles, it had been since 1994 that a class had left without experiencing a conference championship, and the Class of 2021 felt a sense of urgency after not holding the banner their first two seasons. Not to be denied a third time, the Class of 2021 helped the Athenas to a strong win over Pomona-Pitzer by nearly 100 points, earning the SCIAC crown in what would unexpectedly turn out to be their last chance as a group. 

Six of the 10 members of this year's senior class also had their tickets ready for the NCAA Division III Championships after earning qualifying times, but had those flights canceled with the shutdown of college sports just one week prior to the competition. 



The 10 members of the CMS Women's Swimming and Diving Class of 2021 are as follows: 

Christina Campbell (Back/Free, La Canada, Calif. - CMC, Psychology)
Campbell transferred into the program in 2019-20 as a junior after competing at UC Santa Barbara, and had an immediate impact on the CMS success. She earned All-America honors withe the 800 free relay team, which set a new school record at the conference championships, while earning All-SCIAC distinction in the 200 back with a third-place finish. She also added a fourth-place finish in the 200 free and a fifth-place finish in the 500 free, providing 51 points in her three individual events. A psychology major at Claremont McKenna, she has served as the marketing and social director for the CMC College Programming Board and is working as a marketing intern at Curology in the San Francisco Bay area. 

Laura Dickinson (Breast/Free, Ross, Calif. - CMC, Psychology and French)
Dickinson swam the 50 free at the SCIAC Championships in 2020, earning the 14th best time out of 72 competitors with a 24.53, while also setting a new personal best in the 100 free at 53.40, which also placed 14th. As a first-year in 2018, she had 12th place finishes in the 50 free and the 100 breast at SCIACs. Dickinson is a dual major at Claremont McKenna in psychology and French, and was worked a swim instructor and a lifeguard. Dickinson speaks three languages (English, Spanish and French) and wrote her senior thesis on The Effects of Retirement on Division III Collegiate Athletes' Mental Health. 

Jen Franklin (Dive, Newport Beach, Calif. - CMC, Environmental Analysis)
Franklin competed for two seasons as a diver for CMS, joining the program as a sophomore. As a junior in 2020, she capped off her career with 265.20 points in the one-meter dive and 264.15 in the three-meter dive for the Athenas, which hosted the diving championships at Axelrood Pool. A SCIAC All-Academic Team member as an environmental analysis major, Franklin has been part of the College Outdoor Initiative Club at CMC, while serving as an EcoRep on campus to help build sustainable campus habits. She spent the summer of 2019 as a student ethnographer with the University of Georgia's Study Abroad Program in Costa Rica and has spent the last year as a member of CMC's COVID-19 working group.

Emily Howard (Free/Back, Portola Valley, Calif. - CMC, Computer Science)
Howard has been a SCIAC All-Academic Team selection for three years, while competing in the freestyle and the backstroke for the Athenas. She had a personal best in the SCIAC Championships as a junior in the 50 free, after studying abroad in Hungary in the fall semester, clocking a 25.25. She also had another PR in the 100 free as the leadoff leg of a 400 free relay against Whittier and Occidental. She has worked on campus as a computer science tutor for Harvey Mudd students, and has held an internship as a software engineer at Gatsby Labs. In the summer of 2020, she earned an 8VC Fellowship, an immersive 3-month internship program that places undergraduate students into the world's most innovative startups.

Anne Jang (Back/Breast, Irvine, Calif. - CMC, Government and Philosophy)
Jang has competed for the CMS swimming and diving program for the last three years, competing in the backstroke, breaststroke and individual medley. As both a first-year and sophomore, she was one of only 14 competitors (out of 48) to break the 1-minute mark in the 100 back, earning a 59.70 in 2018 and improving to a 59.45 in 2019. She also had her top time in the 200 back in the 2019 SCIACs, finishing in 2:10.22. A government and philosophy major at Claremont McKenna, she was involved on campus with the Asian Pacific American Mentoring program (APAM) and the Gould Center of Humanistic Studies. She is currently working as a junior business analyst in Orange County.     

Stephanie Lewis (Back/Fly, Spokane, Wash. - CMC, Molecular Biology)
Lewis earned All-America honors as a junior by swimming the butterfly leg for the CMS 200-yard medley relay team, which won a SCIAC Championship with an NCAA qualifying time of 1:43.83, which was the fourth-fastest time in program history. She also qualified for the finals of the SCIACs in her individual events in both the 100 fly and the 200 back, and had three top-12 finishes to contribute to the winning total for CMS. A molecular biology major at Claremont McKenna, she has been a SCIAC All-Academic Team selection every year, and was part of the Van Arnam Lab at the Keck Science Department. She did her senior thesis on Using NMR Spectroscopy and Computational Chemistry to Confirm the Structure of Novel Antibiotic Nocamycin O.

Natalia Orbach-Mandel (Free, Tucscon, Ariz. - HMC, Mathematics and Computer Science)
Orbach-Mandel has had a major role for CMS over her career, anchoring many of the Athenas relays and competing in the sprint freestyle events. She ranks fourth in CMS history in the 100 free (51.56), fourth in the 200 free (1:52.61) and sixth in the 50 free (23.77), while also swimming the fastest 100 free relay split in program history (50.65). She was an All-American in four relay events as a junior, an honorable mention All-America in three relay events over her first two years, and has been All-SCIAC 12 times, including second and third-place finishes as an individual in 2020. A math and computer science major at Harvey Mudd, Orbach-Mandel has interned at Microsoft and with BNY Mellon, as well as at the University of Arizona.

Mia Syme (Distance Freestyle, Seattle, Wash. - CMC, Physics and Mathematics)
Syme is a four-time SCIAC Champion, sweeping the 500 and the 1650 as both a first-year and as a sophomore, while qualifying for nationals both years. She studied abroad as a junior in the fall, and came back to earn All-SCIAC honors again with a third-place finish in the 1650, contributing to a 1-2-3 CMS sweep with first-years Gracey Hiebert and Ella Blake. Syme holds the school record in the 500 free (4:57.37) and ranked second in CMS history in both the 1000 and the 1650.  A physics and mathematics major at Claremont McKenna, she also has been a middle distance runner for the CMS Track and Field during her career, and serves as a Quantitative and Computing Lab mentor at CMC. 

Janet Tran (Free/Fly, San Jose, Calif. - CMC, Chemistry)
Tran earned All-America honors with two relays as a junior in 2020, contributing to the 200 free relay and the 400 free relays which earned NCAA qualifying times. Over her career, she has been All-SCIAC five times, including winning a league championship in the 800 free relay as a first-year in 2018. In 2020, she reached the finals in all three of her individual events, finishing fourth in the 100 free, fifth in the 200 free, and eighth in the 50 free to give CMS 46 points. A chemistry major at CMC, Tran has been a SCIAC All-Academic Team selection, and a CSCAA First-Team Scholar All-America selection, and is a member of the Van Arman Lab on campus. Her senior thesis was Genomic Analysis of the Novel Antibiotic Nocamycin O.

Allie Umemoto (Free/Fly, Sacramento, Calif. - Scripps, Sociology and Politics)
Umemoto was part of an 800 free relay team that won a SCIAC title in 2019 before setting a program-record time at nationals. As a junior in 2020, she earned All-America honors with the CMS 400 free relay team, which earned an NCAA qualifying time before championships were canceled. After studying abroad in the fall, she reached the finals at SCIACs in all three of her individual events, coming in fifth in the 100 free, sixth in the 200 free and seventh in the 200 fly to give the Athenas 45 points towards their SCIAC title. A dual major in sociology and politics at Scripps, she has been a SCIAC All-Academic team selection every year, is a member of 5C Refugee Advocacy Network. a Mentor for Uncommon Good, and spent last summer as a programs intern with the Japanese Cultural and Community Center of Northern California.