After a training trip down to Florida and some time at home, the Lawrence University men’s and women’s swim teams jumped right back into action this past weekend. They played host to the UW Oshkosh Titans on Saturday, January 6 in the Boldt Natatorium. The competition was close, but the UW Oshkosh women won the meet 121.5-104.5 and the men won 113-98. This was their last home meet of the season, so they honored their seniors during one of the breaks.
Despite the close loses in head to head competition, there were some great swims for the Vikings. On the women’s side, Lawrence won six events. Freshman Erin Lengel won two events: the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 25.59 and the 100-yard butterfly with with 1:01.41. Sophomore Elsie Riggle won the 1,000-yard freestyle, the longest event of the day, timing in at 11:40.54. Senior Eryn Blagg won the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 57.11. Fellow senior Emei Thompson won the 500-yard freestyle, swimming 5:38.62. Finally, the Lady Vikes ended the meet with the 200-yard freestyle relay team of Blagg, sophomore Bridget Duero, junior Lizzy Garcia-Creighton and senior Shelby Hader taking home the victory with a time of 1:46.66.
On the men’s side of the competition, the Vikings won eight events. They started out the meet with a victory as the 200-yard medley relay team made up of junior Max Stahl, sophomore Tom Goldberg, junior Akio Yamamoto, and senior Travis Charlow won the event with a time of 1:43.78. Stahl, Charlow and freshman Anton Hutchinson each won two individual events as well. Stahl won the 100-yard backstroke in 58.12 seconds and was first in the 200-yard individual medley swimming 2:10.64. Charlow won the 50-yard freestyle and the 100-yard freestyle with times of 23.07 and 50.60 respectively. Hutchinson won two of the longer freestyle events, winning the 200-yard freestyle in 1:51.51 and the 500-yard freestyle in 5:00.07. Goldberg was the other individual event winner of the day taking home the victory in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:06.56.
“The meet on Saturday was super fun! After having only had three days back on campus to train before we had to compete again, we did super well as a whole and really each gave one hundred percent effort,” said senior captain Anna Vogel. “A lot of people had awesome swims and we had a lot of individual victories. The energy on the deck was so positive and it was great to have a lot of friends and family members come support us as it always is when we swim at home!”
The team has been working hard, even in a vacation location. As Vogel described their trip, “Florida was awesome! It was a little cold, but we powered through the 6 a.m., 40 degree practices in exchange for some fun team beach time! We all trained super hard and it was a great team bonding experience.”
Looking forward, the swim season is building towards the conference meet in the middle of February. “Our goal for the rest of the season is to keep training hard and keep dropping time. We obviously want to score the highest we can at conference, but also keep supporting each other and having individual successes is really important to our team” Vogel explained. The Lawrence University swim team is back in action this coming weekend when they travel to Illinois Tech on Jan. 13.
