Swimming ends successful first season

Jared Speckman- Staff Writer
2/10/12

The men’s and women’s swimming teams ended their seasons last weekend at Minnesota State-Mankato. The meet in Minnesota also ended the swimming team’s inaugural season after more than a two-decade hiatus.
On the women’s side, Maggie Metz, first-year, finished first in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:57.24, beating the second-place competitor by more than three seconds. Metz also finished second in the 100-yard backstroke. She finished less than one second out of first place.
Josh Sawers, first-year, took second in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 55.96. Austin Andrews, first-year, took third in the same event with a time of 56.56.
“It went really well. Unfortunately, we had less time to prepare for our last meet as we would usually have, but it was a good meet and a good season,” Mark Gole, head men’s and women’s swimming coach, said.
Normally, both swimming teams now would spend two weeks preparing for the upcoming conference championships, but because of the transition to NCAA Division II and no current conference affiliation, they are not eligible for the post-season this year.
Before their meet at Mankato, they were at the University of Minnesota for the Minnesota Challenge. The Minnesota Challenge was a meet against 18 other schools of various sizes.
The men’s 200-yard freestyle relay team took 13th out of 29 relay squads. That team was Sam Blacksher, Matthew Luton, Andrews, and Sawers, all first-years. The men’s 800-yard relay team of Ben Plank, first-year, Sawers, Blacksher and Luton finished sixth out of 20 relay teams. Luton also took seventh in the 1650-yard freestyle.
Metz was spectacular against the competition as she took 10th out of 93 in the 500-yard freestyle, took second in the 400-yard Individual Medley, and took third in the 1650-yard freestyle.
The teams will continue to work toward improving their times by quickly getting back into the pool for practice.
“We’re going to take advantage of every opportunity. While other teams are backing off of their athletes in preparation we’ll be working hard to improve, and we can go a little harder in our practices because of that,” Gole said.
The teams hope to break more school records next year. This year they set and broke 11 records. Metz also achieved three NCAA B qualifying  standards. The “B” standard would not automatically qualify her for the NCAA Championships, but it would give her a  chance to compete if the Cardinals were eligible for postseason competition, according to Gole.
For now, this new team will look to make its second season even more impressive than the first.
“I’ve loved every second of this, and I know I made the right decision. I love my teammates, and I’m excited for next season. I’ll be going back to my club team in the meantime while we’re in the school offseason,” Luton said.