By Haris Sendijarevic, Reporter
The entire AQ swim and dive team after Friday’s session – Photo by Haris Sendijarevic
The Aquinas College Swim and Dive team competed at the Davenport University October Invitational swim meet at East Kentwood High School aquatic center on Oct. 9 and 10. This was the men and women teams’ second meet of the season.
The meet had a total of 38 events spread evenly between the men and women teams over three sessions. A few examples of the events that were held during the meet were: men and women 200 freestyle relay, men and women 400 medley relay, men and women 1 meter diving, men and women 400 individual medley and men and women 3 meter diving.
The AQ swim and dive team’s pregame chant before Saturday mornings session – Photo by Haris Sendijarevic
“I think the meet went pretty well,” dive captain Evan Bennett said. “We got to compete against some good competition on the boards and the swimmers all got to race some fast people too.”
This was shown in both AQ teams’ respectable places that they finished between everyone invited. The women’s team were able to grab third place with 584.5 total points scored, and the men’s team finished in fourth place with 434.5 total points scored. The women’s team was also able to secure two silver and four bronze medals at the meet. For each of the 38 events, the men’s and women’s teams were able to finish in a wide array of places. Each team was able to get third, second and even first place a few times in the events that occurred.
“Our freshmen were on fire, and we also had a lot of people coming off of injuries that did really well,” sophomore swimmer Liam Sneller said. This was shown in some of the team school records being broken during the meet. The 100 and 200 breaststroke record was broken by sophomore swimmer, Elena Cavadas, with a time of 1:06.26 and 2:25.81. The 200 and 400 medley relay record was also broken by junior swimmer, Emersyn Joslin, sophomore swimmer, Elena Cavadas, senior captain swimmer, Amelia Edens and sophomore swimmer, Hannah Brown at the meet as well with a time of 1:48.38 and 3:58.92.
Photo of one of the events during the Saturday morning session – Photo by Haris Sendijarevic
“Our goal for the year is to perform as well as possible at conference, and to send as many individuals to nationals as we can,” senior swimmer Titus Smith said. Last year the men’s team were able to send seven individuals to the NAIA National Championships.
Both teams overall have a positive and ambitious outlook for how this year’s season will go for each of them.
“As a girls team our #1 goal this year is to win [the] conference … if we keep up how we’ve been swimming and diving, we have a really good shot,” senior swimmer captain Amelia Edens. Her belief, in the team, comes from the talented freshman class that has arrived this year, and being able to retain the core squad that got them to finish runners-up last year.
The swim and dive team’s next meet will be on Saturday, Nov. 7 away against Kalamazoo College. The team will be hoping to win their second head-to-head swim meet after beating Bethel University on Saturday, Oct. 3. At that meet, they won with a score of 207.5 vs 57.5 for the men’s team and 170 vs 118 for the women’s team.
