Kirstie Chen and Samantha Shellem will be swimming for Stanford and Cal respectively next year.

         Samantha will be attending UC Berkeley, the NCAA women's champion last year.  Sam joins a powwerful corp of Cal freestylers and is expected to make an immediate impact in the middle distance and distance freestyle events.  Samantha already has the NCAA 'A' cut for the 500 free and will likely score well in both the 500 and the 1650 free at next year's NCAA championship.  For 2010 Sam will join Cal stars Liv Jensen and Emily Bibb in the middle distance events and be counted upon heavily in the distance free events.

      Kirstie will join a very strong IM freshman clas at Stanford next fall.  With the departure of Amreican 400 IM record holder Julia Smit next year, IM strength became a priority for the Cardinals in 2010.  Three of the four best high school IMers in the country all selected Stanford in the early signing period.  Madeline Dirado and Felicia Lee were both on National Junior teams with Kirstie in 2008 and 2009 and all three will attend Stanford in 2010.  Kirstie will also be counted upon to replace Stanford senior star Elaine Breeden in the 200 fly. 

      Coach Shipherd is thrilled with the choices of his two stars, "The decision to attend Cal and Stanford by Sam and Kirstie is very exciting for the Armada program.  Both Kirstie and Sam will be in the thick of the hunt for NCAA championships every year for the next four years.  In a way it brings the top college swimming programs in the country right into our family here at La Mirada."