The meet, which was senior day for the men’s team, came after an intense winter break full of practice. That, however, didn’t slow anyone down as both the men and the women handled the Sun Devils. The women won 159-137 and the men’s victory was even more decisive as they took the meet 195-105. Overall, the Utes won 18 events to ASU’s 10.
“It’s been a crazy ride and just getting here and getting to the senior meet, it was amazing,” said Karson Applin. “I had so many emotions and so many feelings. In fact, I was standing up there shaking. I was so excited to be a part of this last swim meet here.”
Not only does Applin feel a part of something special, he feels like the team is a family.
“You realize who you are as a person,” he said. “You build friendships that last forever. This is a family. If you ever need help or need someone to turn to, you have these people.”
On a day that saw plenty of Utah swimmers place first in their respective events, the standout swimmer was junior Nick Soedel, who won both events he was entered in, the 50- and 100-yard freestyle.
“That was the best I’ve ever done in adual meet,” he said. “I was really happy
and proud of that. I feel like my training is starting to come together.”
As the Pac-12 portion of the schedule rolls on, Soedel feels the team is in a good spot right now.
“We’ve won every dual meet so far on the guys’ side and the girls have only lost once,” he said. “We’re all pumped up and our confidence is real high.”
Utah head coach Joe Dykstra believes that while Sunday’s win was undoubtedly a positive result, there are still things his team has to improve on.
“It’s great to come out of here with a win on both sides against a very good ASU team, especially on the women’s side. Their women are very good,” Dykstra said. “I was a
little displeased that we were making a lot of technical mistakes today. I know we were very tired from a brutal week of training.”
Dykstra knew that the times of the swimmers wouldn’t be spectacular, but he also realizes that the team has to be better moving forward. Now that school has started back up, the team’s training will be tapered in comparison to what they did over
the past week, but conditioning and preventing technical mistakes will be atop the list of things to focus on.
“We’ve got to clean up technical mistakes,” he said. “And when we get to late January and February, we really focus on power and speed.”