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You have to go back to 1973 to find a year when Cal does not win at least an individual or relay or doubles or team national championships, but the team national championship success had only really entered another level in the past decade (partially helped by Rugby playing an extra non-NCAA championship and could win both a 15s and 7s national title in the same year). Last school year (2019-20) was the first one since 2003 that Cal did not win a team national championship. That streak will probably extend to this year. So Cal will likely be stuck at 97 team national championships (unless rowing pulls through unexpectedly or women's tennis makes history).

A "fun" fact is that Cal as recently as 3-4 years ago claimed two extra team national championships. After I made a big deal about Cal approaching 100 national team titles (if I recall correctly, back in 2018 after the women's rowing one to then 98), Cal Athletics finally did an audit and threw away two track titles with ineligible players. Cal won a men's swimming in 2019 to get to the current count of 97.

Sorry for not directly answering your question, but Cal is definitely in a slight "slump" if you ignore the whole pandemic and lost season thing.

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