The Utah women’s swimming and diving team took another defeat by Florida Gulf Coast (165-135) and Boise State (158-141) at the Ute Natatorium on Friday, dropping its record to 0-5.
Though the losses are beginning to pile up for this team, head coach Joe Dykstra has kept high hopes for the season to come.
“This was a very competitive meet between all three teams,” Dykstra said. “I really enjoyed the fact that there were a lot of close races which is going to help us a lot down the road. We were without, arguably, our best two swimmers due to illness and injury today; Maddie Meisel and Stina Colleou. To be as competitive as we were without two of our most important swimmers, I feel good about it. We had some times today that were better than what we had in California so I feel like we are on a good path.”
To start the meet, the Utes took second place in the 200-yard medley relay as the team of Shayla Archer, Genevieve Robertson, Jenna Marsh and Gillian St. John touched in at 1:44.20. Following in third were Megan Kawaguchi, Darby Wayner, Petra Soininen and Rhianna Williams (1:45.36), with Ashlyn Karosas, Sydney Bull, Alex Stein and Julienne Tadena coming in fifth (1:48.18).
In the 200-yard breaststroke, freshman Genevieve Robertson took first with a time of 2:16.63, followed by teammate Brianna Francis (2:19.15), with Tadena coming in sixth (2:25.95). In the 100-yard breaststroke, Robertson took second with a time of 1:04.20, with Bull taking fifth (1:06.20) and Wayner taking seventh (1:07.03).
For the rest of the evening, the Utes took second in five events. Freshman Jordan Anderson finished with a 10:24.76 in the 1,000-yard freestyle, while Kat Wickham came in fifth (10:36.36), Paolina Carnevale in eighth (10:53.64), Madeleine Velez in tenth (11:11.50) and Maudee Miner in eleventh (11:14.40).
In the 200-yard backstroke, Kawaguchi came in second with a 2:06.24, as Hailey Pabst finished sixth (2:08.19), and Archer in tenth (2:11.37) in the event.
In the 100-yard butterfly, sophomore Marsh touched in second at 56.19. Soininen took fifth in this event as well (57.45), with Bull coming in ninth (59.55), Ashlyn Karosas tying for eleventh (1:00.10) and Stein taking 13th (1:01.37).
Junior Francis just missed first place in the 200-yard IM with the time of 2:06.33, as Wayner took seventh (2:11.19), with Anderson and Isabella Kearns tying for eighth (2:11.75).
In the 500-yard freestyle, Anderson just missed second place, touching in third at 5:03.27. Wickham finished sixth (5:08.18) with Maryssa McArthur (5:22.86) and Velez (5:31.08) finishing tenth and eleventh respectively.
As the last event of the meet, the 400-yard freestyle relay team of Dorien Butter, Marsh, St.John and Anderson took third with a time of 3:32.62. Williams, Pabst, McArthur and Tadena took seventh (3:37.84) with Karosas, Wickham, Kawaguchi and Archer coming in eighth (3:44.55).
In the diving events, junior Amanda Casillas took first in both the one-meter and three-meter event, with scores of 290.85 and 287.00, respectively.
As far as next week goes, Dykstra feels that it will be a great competition as the women’s team will be competing against two very solid teams.
“We will swim our best events, try to get better, but we are going to need to have some people swim some events we haven’t seen them do yet this season, making some event-choice determination later this year,” Dykstra said.
The women’s squad will host UC Davis next weekend on Nov. 6, while the men’s squad will host UNLV the following day.
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