It’s never easy to lose to a rival, but the Utah swimming and diving teams’ focus on the end of the season helped take away some of the sting after a close loss to BYU.
Both the men’s and women’s teams were defeated in their home pool against the Cougars in their last meet of the season Friday.
“I don’t think it’s ever easy to take a loss to BYU and I don’t want to do it ever again,” said head coach Greg Winslow. “But we don’t hang banners for dual meets, we hang banners for championships and that’s our focus.”
After a disappointing showing against the Cougars last season, the Utes kept the meet close this time around.
The outcome came down to the final few events before the Utah men and women fell by 10 and 20 points, respectively.
“The real marker for us is last year they beat us both by almost 100, and to really be able to turn around in just one year and take them to the last couple of events is huge for us,” Winslow said.
Despite being unable to close out their season with a victory, Utah is still focused on the looming Mountain West Conference championships and plans to use the loss to BYU as motivation during the upcoming championship meet.
“We lost to BYU, so they get to smile for three weeks, but if we win at conference we’ll get to smile for a whole year and that would make the whole season well worth it,” Winslow said.
With no meets to prepare for until the MWC meet in three weeks, the Utes are looking forward to getting some much-needed rest. The team is hoping the break will give it the boost it needs to win at conference.
During the next couple of weeks, the Utes will be working on getting as much speed and power into their strokes as possible and fine-tuning their events.
“Our athletes know what they need to do,” Winslow said. “Now they have a chance to rest and we’re going to come back stronger than ever.”
Although the Utah men have lost to every MWC team except Air Force and the women have been defeated by Colorado State and BYU, Winslow is confident in his team’s ability to get the job done at the championships.
“I’m really excited about where our team is; we have the potential to be the best team in the conference,” Winslow said. “We might not have shown it in all of our duel meets but hopefully we will at conference.”
After a long season of hard work and training, both Utah teams are looking forward to seeing their efforts pay off in the postseason.
“We’re finally getting all the pieces of the puzzle together and we’re excited to lay them on the table and be able to look back and say, “What a great piece of work,'” Winslow said.