Swimming wins three of four dual meets
Hopefully, the expression holds true: the third time is the charm. The swim team has faced University of Houston twice, but the Owls have yet to claim bragging rights over their cross-town rivals. Their final chance before the Conference USA meet will be in January, when they meet UH in Baton Rouge, La., for the Louisiana Triple Dual Meet. Although the final outcome was the same as it was two weeks ago at the UH Invitational, the Owls were able to significantly narrow the Cougars' margin of victory from 52 points to 27 points this weekend. Rice easily overcame its other competitors, beating Florida International University 239-75, University of the Incarnate Word 260-87 and Vanderbilt 256-80.
However, Rice has no diving team, which is the swimming equivalent of competing in a track and field meet with no field competitors. This lack of personnel means that the Owls begin every meet with a 32-point deficit, since they forfeit all of those diving points to the other team. Had the Owls sported a competitive diving team, they would have had a good chance of finishing 4-0 at the meet.
Assistant coach Jada Hallmark (Sid '01) said the team wanted to make up for last week's loss to UH.
"We had something to prove going into it [the meet] knowing that last week we hadn't really swum our best," she said. "The girls wanted to have a little revenge and come back, and unfortunately we weren't quite as strong as we needed to be to overcome that 32-point diving deficit."
The disappointing loss to UH aside, Rice secured four individual first-place finishes and five second-place finishes, including an impressive showing in the freestyle events. In the 1,650-yard freestyle, senior Caitlin Warner took second place with a time of 17:21.74. In the 500- yard freestyle, the second-longest swim of the night, Warner reappeared towards the top of the pack, again grabbing second place. Coming in close behind her were freshmen Nicole Delaloye and Alex O'Brien in third and fourth, respectively. Fellow freshman Shelby Bottoms led the 200-yard freestyle for the Owls, touching in at 1:52.33 and capturing second place. Junior Pam Zelnick grabbed first place in the 50-yard freestyle, posting a season-best time of 24.05 in the evening sprint event. Her stellar performance earned her C-USA swimmer of the week honors. Senior teammates Skylar Craig and Diane Gu came in third and fourth place, respectively.
Rice also had strong finishes in breaststroke, butterfly and backstroke. Junior Angela Wo took second place in the 100-yard backstroke in a season best time of 58.44. Wo returned in the 100-yard butterfly to snatch first place with a career-best time of 56.89. Sophomore Erin Mattson placed third in the same event with her best time in two years, a notable feat after being red-shirted last season. Wo was also Rice's top finisher in the 200-yard butterfly in second place.
Even though the team swam well at the meet, Hallmark noted that the performance does not affect the team's ranking.
"In swimming . your dual meet record doesn't really have any bearing on how you end up at conference or how you end up nationally ranked," she said. "It's nice to win, but it's really irrelevant when you think about the whole scope of the season. As long as we're swimming fast, our times are dropping, we're having smart races, and we're doing things right, we're not going to get too tied up in the outcome of the meet."
The Owls also put together some extremely successful relay teams. In the 200-yard medley relay Wo, Craig, Zelnick and senior Carlyann Miller finished in first place in 1:45.62. Fellow teammates junior Justine Lin, sophomore Ashten Ackerman, freshman Alexandra Ernst and Gu took third place. In the 400-yard freestyle relay Zelnick, Bottoms, Mattson and Miller finished in second place while freshman Alison Godbe, Gu, Delaloye and Warner took third. Wo, Zelnick, Mattson and Miller grabbed second place in the 400-yard medley relay. In the final event, the 200-yard freestyle relay, Zelnick, Gu, Craig and Miller finished in first place 1:36.69, followed closely by Godbe, junior Megan Land, Delaloye and Warner in third place.
Rice competes at the Cornhusker Invitational this weekend, a four-day meet at the Devaney Natatorium at the University of Nebraska. There will be eight other teams in the fray, including the University of Nebraska, Colorado State University,Iowa State University, the University of Nebraska-Omaha, the University of North Texas, Northern Colorado University, Northern Iowa University and South Dakota State University. This is the first year that Rice has been invited to the meet.
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