The Lawrence University men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams capped off another successful season with second place finishes in the Midwest Conference Meet, which took place here at Lawrence last weekend. The men nearly took the top spot, but Grinnell just managed to hold them off by fourteen points. Grinnell finished with 816 points while LU had 802. On the women’s side, Grinnell won by a convincing margin, but Lawrence was second by a considerable margin as well. Grinnell had 924, while Lawrence had 628.
Individually, many LU swimmers did exceptionally well. Senior Daniel Hurley, from St. Phillip’s, Newfoundland, won his third consecutive Midwest Conference Male Swimmer of the Year award. He finished his Lawrence swimming career with twelve individual conference titles, and has never lost an individual event at a conference meet.
At this year’s meet, Hurley won the 500 yard freestyle, setting a pool record in 4:42:88. His time in this event qualifies him for the national meet in this event. Hurley continued on to win the 400 yard individual medley, setting a conference record in the prelims. He qualified for nationals in this event as well. Hurley capped it all off by winning the 200 yard butterfly.
Other male swimmers also won events for LU. Freshman Nick Heuer won both the 100 yard and 200 yard breaststroke events for the Vikings. Also, LU junior Tom Carroll Jr. won the 1650 yard freestyle event.
In the diving portion of the meet, LU freshman Tom Towle came into the meet with high hopes of winning both the one and three meter boards. Sadly for Towle, this was not to be. He took second place behind Eric Blevins of Grinnell on both boards, which is still a very good place for a freshman.
While the LU women did not have any individual event winners, they came close many times. Sophomore Jodie Primus took three second place finishes on the weekend. Senior Lisa Nickel and junior Allison Van Dyken each took two second place finishes for LU.
Overall, both teams were very happy with their places this weekend, and a few swimmers will be going to a “last chance” meet this weekend at Wheaton College. At Wheaton, their sole goal will be to achieve the times needed to qualify for the National meet, and join Daniel Hurley as Lawrence representatives.