BERKELEY. – The California women's swimming & diving team signed seven prospects to its 2026 recruiting class, as announced by director of swimming & diving Dave Durden on Friday. Five swimmers and two divers will join the Golden Bears next season.
 
Kelsey Zhang, the fifth-ranked 2026 commit according to SwimSwam, comes to Berkeley from Saratoga and will compete in the butterfly and individual medley events. A member of Pal Alto Aquatics, Zhang has the top 200-yard butterfly time in her entire class at 1:53.51, which is 3.5 seconds faster than this year's NCAA qualifying time and would be the fifth-fastest time in the NCAA this season.
 
Cal signed another top-10 recruit as well in Ava De Anda from Riverside, who is ranked ninth by SwimSwam. The freestyler won the California High School State Championship in the 100-yard (48.27) and 200-yard (1:45.98) iterations of the event as a junior at Riverside Poly-Tech High School with career-best times. The Riverside Aquatics Association swimmer's 100-yard performance would qualify her for this year's NCAA Championship, and her 200-yard time is 0.45 seconds off that standard.
 
Isabel Wolk comes to Cal from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she is the third-ranked swimmer at North Carolina Aquatic Club in the freestyle and IM events. Wolk collected career-best times in the 200-yard IM (2:00.24), the 400-yard IM (4:17.80), and the 200-yard freestyle (1:47.41) to take first in all three events at the Speedo Winter Junior Championship in March.
 
Halle West joins the Bears from Winnipeg, Manitoba, where she is a member of the Canadian National Team and Manta Swim Club. West does all strokes from breaststroke to freestyle to IM and has already represented her country on the national stage. West placed seventh in the 100-breaststroke (1:10.13) and fourth as the breaststroke leg of the 400-medley relay at the Junior Pan Pacific Championships last year. Her sister Mia West is currently a sophomore on the Bears' roster.
 
Egle Salu, the second-ranked swimmer on her country's national team, comes from Rakvere, Estonia and brings a ton of breaststroke talent and international experience to Berkeley. She earned silver in the 50-yard breaststroke (31.97) at the European Junior Championships in July.
 
Maddy Kohel is the first diver of the group and comes to Cal from RipFest Diving Club and Washburn High School in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she also trained with the Minnesota Diving Academy. Kohel is a five-time USA Diving Junior National Championship finalist that was also a semifinalist at the 2025 USA Diving Senior National Championship on the three-meter. She is a two-time Minnesota high school state champion and a record holder in the state as well.
 
The final member of the 2026 class is Egyptian National Team member and Olympian Malak Tawfik, who brings a wealth of experience competing at the pinnacle of the sport. Tawfik was just 16 years old when she competed in the 10-meter platform event at the 2024 Paris Olympics as the sole representative from her home country and competed in the same event at the 2024 World Aquatics Championships. She is the three-time reigning national champion in Egypt, having won titles on both springboard and platform from 2023-25.