Whatever happens in Annie Chandler’s swimming future, the former Arizona Wildcat will have a hard time matching what happened on the medal stand over the weekend.

Her boyfriend, Olympic gold medalist Matt Grevers, who trains in Tucson and competes with the Tucson Ford Dealers Aquatics swim club, won the 100-meter backstroke at the Missouri Grand Prix on Saturday.

Event organizers, in on the proposal, had asked Chandler to help present the medals after the race … and, eventually, Grevers lured Chandler onto the medal stand. He dropped to one knee, took out the ring (which had been slipped to him by his brother) and popped the question.

Chandler said yes.

Chandler, 24, was an 18-time All-American at Arizona and swam on six NCAA champion relay teams for the Wildcats. She was a finalist for last year’s NCAA Woman of the Year Award. She graduated cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism and a minor in art history.

She is training for a shot at the Olympics this summer.

Grever, 26, won two Olympic gold medals in 2008 helping Team USA in the relay preliminaries, and he also won silver in the 100-meter backstroke.

Annie Chandler swims in the 100-yard breaststroke at the 2010 Pac-10 championships. Photo by Kirby Lee/Image of Sport-US PRESSWIRE

University of Arizona swimmer Annie Chandler is still in the running for the NCAA Woman of the Year award, selected as one of nine finalists Wednesday.

If she wins, it would continue an amazing run for Wildcats swimming, which has produced the past two winners of the NCAA Woman of the year award — Justine Schluntz in 2010 and Lacey Nymeyer in 2009.

Chandler graduated cum laude with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism and a minor in art history. She was an 18-time All-American and swam on six NCAA champion relay teams for the Wildcats.

Here is the release from UA:

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Annie Chandler shows off her gold medal. Photo by Feng Li/Getty Images

Former Arizona Wildcats swimmer Annie Chandler — who was selected the Pac-10 Woman of the Year earlier this month — won a gold medal in the 50-meter breaststroke at the World University Games in Shenzhen, China.

Chandler won in a time of 31.13 seconds, although she said in an interview she was disappointed in her time. She posted a time of 30.89 seconds at the Paris Open in June.

She also will compete in the 100-meter breaststroke.

Arizona redshirt senior Cory Chitwood was fifth in the men’s 200-meter medley with a time of 2:00.53.

Annie Chandler swims in the 100-yard breaststroke at the 2010 Pac-10 championships.
Photo by Kirby Lee/Image of Sport-US PRESSWIRE

University of Arizona swimmer Annie Chandler has been selected the Pac-10 Woman of the Year.

Chandler is now in the running for NCAA Woman of the Year, an honor won by a Wildcats swimmer in each of the past two seasons — Justine Schluntz in 2010 and Lacey Nymeyer in 2009.

That all speaks to the kind of program run by Frank Busch, who left after last season to become the national team director for USA Swimming. Eric Hansen is now in charge of the Arizona program.

Here is the press release from the University of Arizona about Chandler:

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Where does the hiring of athletic director Greg Byrne rate on your list?
Photo by Mark Evans, TucsonCitizen.com

The “best of the year” lists are always tricky.

For the calendar year that was in Arizona Wildcats athletics, do you pick specific games, specific moments, or do you go with larger themes?

Do you choose only the good things? How do you balance the happenings in football and men’s basketball with the success in other sports?

When our Gannett big brother, the Arizona Republic, asked us to come up with a top 10 list of storylines for UA, we muddled through all that and came up with the following Top 10 list.

You can see the Republic’s Year in Review slideshows for all the state-wide sports topics on azcentral.com.

Before you click on that link, vote in our poll and let us know what you you think is the biggest storyline of the year for the Wildcats.

(What did we miss? I’ll get us started: I think basketball coach Sean Miller signing a Top 5 recruiting class in November is potentially worthy of the list as the clearest signal yet that he can restore the program to its previous heights.)

Anyway, on to the Top 10 storylines …

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