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COLLEGE SWIMMING ROUNDUP
The College Swimming Roundup is brought to you by The CG Sports Company, the representation behind some of your favorite swimmers like Elizabeth Beisel, Beata Nelson, and Kieran Smith.
πββοΈΒ SWIMS OF THE WEEK ππ½ββοΈ
Southern Illinois, Introduce Yourself - Situated near the forests and lakes of Shawnee National Forest, Southern Illinois University is rather remote for a D1 school, but isn't without its share of pedigree. They had a good number of All-Americans in the 80s and 90s but haven't had a finalist at the big show since 1986 for the women and 1991 for the men. Head coach Geoff Hanson took over in 2019 after helping build a great D2 program at Colorado Mesa and serving as an associate and assistant head coach at both Arizona and Wisconsin and has been on a path to turning this program back to relevance. SIU hosted the A3 Performance Invite this past weekend as the first of the midseason invites and showed they may have one of the better mid-major squads in the nation. Their most impressive performances were in the men's sprints - they put 3 guys under 20 and added another in a 200 Free Relay (Relay of the Week incoming). The individual stars of the meet were freshman South African Ruard van Renen (19.99/44.14 free, 21.76/46.27/1:42.88 back, 47.36 fly) and Jack Khrypunov (47.25/1:44.55 fly, 1:46.91 IM) on the men's side and Celia Pulido (25.33/52.51/1:55.97 back, 2:00.74 IM) on the women's side. Outside of SIU, Evansville, one of the smallest D1 schools in the nation, had some good swims, with Iryna Tsesiul breaking their school record in the 100 Back (55.05), and another South African, Riccardo Di Domenico breaking the oldest school record in the book (from the '99-'00 season) with a 44.77 100 Free. Evansville's men are looking especially well-rounded, taking the 400 Medley Relay over SIU with a 3:15.03 made up of 49.99/54.11/46.87/44.06 splits.
Ivy League Dual Meet Round Robins -Β No conferenceΒ likes their in-conference dual meets like the Ivy League. They go so far as to keep individual meet records for many of the matchups, and the Harvard-Yale-Princeton (HYP) meet in the spring is a rest and suit up meet for most of the swimmers on those teams, almost on the level of the conference championships. While some of the teams kicked off last week, this was the first weekend of full-on Ivy action. The men's side had some fantastic meets - Columbia 151-149 over Yale (we'll get to that one later) and 155-145 over Princeton, and Penn 151-150 over Brown. Adam Wu and Demirkan Demir of Columbia were two of the stars for the Lions in their 2-0 week, both which may have been considered upsets. Wu, a freshman from Canada, compiled a weekend with 1:37.23/4:27.19/9:21.59 frees and a 1:46.84 200 fly and a 44.58 400 free relay split, while Demir, the best breaststroker in the conference outside Matt Fallon, submitted 54.28/1:58.36 in his specialties. The women's side, while not as competitive team score-wise, still had some impressive swims, with Princeton's Nikki Venema throwing out 23.11/49.68 sprints, teammate Meg Wheeler going 1:57.16 200 back and 2:01.84 200 IM, and Harvard freshman Anya Mostek (53.22, just off her PR 53.20) outracing Brown's Jenna Reznicek (53.70) in the 100 Back.
Oklahoma Christian Knocking Out Invites Early - D2 Oklahoma Christian University hosted the Eagle Invite this weekend. For the women, they took down Nebraska-Kerney while the men's meet was a glorified intrasquad. That didn't stop the Eagle men from knocking out some NCAA qualifying while they were there. Victor Rosado, one of the national favorites, hit likely NCAA qualifying times in the 500 Free (4:22.73) and 200 Fly (1:47.40), while also winning the mile (15:43.48) and 100 Fly (48.38). NCAA 200 Breast champ JT Amrein did the same in the breaststrokes (53.32/1:55.87). Brandon Heredia showed some well-rounded sprint chops with times that would have barely missed the 2022 meet, going 20.22/43.97/1:37.66. OC's men also shined in the relays - all 5 relays would have scored at NCAAs, with the 6:32.54 800 Free Relay (splitting 1:37.66/1:38.69/1:39.67/1:36.53) the most impressive.
St. Cloud State's Best - I'd be remiss to skip these two strong swims from the JoAnn Andregg Invite in Minnesota. St. Cloud State has two men who are up there in the D2 title conversation in their respective specialties, and they put on a show in those events here. Abe Townley blasted the first sub-20 50 Free in the division this year with a 19.96, while Raf Hendricks popped a 1:44.59 200 Back, the best in the nation by almost 2 seconds.
ππΌΒ RELAY(S) OF THE WEEK πββοΈ
SIU Men's 200 Free Relay
This relay is impressive for a number of reasons. While it will definitely get passed up in the next few weeks with the big conference midseason invites, it stands as the 3rd fastest time in the nation thus far this year! It's a school record for SIU, and would have been the 35th fastest overall relay for the '21-'22 season - which doesn't seem like too much, except among non-major conference schools it would have ranked behind only Harvard and SMU in D1, and D2 powerhouses Queens, Drury, Indy, and McKendree. And this relay certainly has more to give, too: van Renen was a 19.9 in the individual 50, Terentiev is only 17 and was a 21.91 SCM (19.7 conversion) last summer, and their next-best sprinter Will Chavez split a 19.55 anchoring their non-time trial relay. The Salukis will have to get under 1:17 for a qualifying standard, but that is looking quite doable.
ππ½ββοΈ MEET OF THE WEEK ππΌ
Columbia over Yale, 151-149
An always competitive rivalry meet that came down to the last couple events. Columbia's Wu lead for the Lions early with 1000 Free and 200 Fly wins, then Yale took control with a 72-56 lead after sweeping top 3 in the 50 Free. After a back-and-forth middle of the meet, Columbia took over the lead with a dominating 3m diving win by All-American Jonathan Suckow (his roster bio describes him as "arguably the greatest Ivy League diver of all time") and their own top 3 sweep of the 200 IM. On the final 400 Free Relay, Yale made a play that almost won them the meet. They would need to take 1-2 in the relay to win, so they saved their do-everything star Noah Millard, who had already won the 200 Free (1:37.38) and 200 Back (1:45.79), for the leadoff on the Bulldog B relay. Millard played his part, blasting a 44.39 fastest split in the race. Yale's A and B and Columbia's A anchors dove in .07 apart, and when the dust cleared, Yale's A had taken the win in 3:00.66, followed by Columbia's A in 3:01.07 and Yale's B in 3:01.65, which was enough for the Lions to hold on to the meet win.
ππ½ββοΈ WEEKEND PREVIEW ππΌ
Here we go: Midseason Invite Week One.
We'll see some of the best teams in the nation with some rest and some suits this week in an effort to knock out some NCAA QT's. The biggest ones are the NC State/GAC Invite (headliners NC State, Arizona State, Stanford), Georgia Invite (Georgia, Auburn, Florida), Tennessee Invite (Virginia, Tennessee, Michigan, with D3 powerhouse Emory), Ohio State Invite (Ohio State, Indiana, UCLA, VT, Notre Dame), Purdue Invite (Louisville, Purdue, Northwestern), and Art Adamson Invite (Texas A&M, Southern Cal, Alabama, LSU).
A number of top D2 and D3 teams are also competing in invites this weekend. Mizzou welcomes D2 NCAA stalwarts McKendree and Missouri S&T. Drury visits Dallas for the SMU Invite, Colorado Mesa's TYR Invite also includes Colorado School of Mines, and UIndy will be at the IUPUI Natatorium for the House of Champions Invite. Some big ones for D3 are UChicago at the Phoenix Fall Classic, and Kenyon, Carnegie Mellon, and Hope at the Kenyon Total Performance Invite.
With so many meets, this is a nonexhaustive list - if your favorite team isn't listed here, we'll still be following along!
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