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Swimming And Diving Achieves Growth From Challenging Tri-Meet In Bloomington

Photo by Norman Cohen.
Photo by Norman Cohen.
Posted: Jan 21, 2023

by Eric Willuweit

Bloomington, Ill. – The Illinois Tech swimming and diving team took on a pair of College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin (CCIW) teams Saturday afternoon at Illinois Wesleyan, with the men's team coming away with a win against the hosts, along with several other noticeable individual performances.

On the men's side, the team defeated Illinois Wesleyan 189-88, while falling to Carthage College 172-121.

Men's event winners:

  • Mark Klinchin – 1000 yard freestyle – 10:08.64
  • Don Rose – 50 yard freestyle – 22.40
  • Evan Standish – 3 meter diving – 164.80

In addition to the individual winners, the men's team finished second in the 200 yard medley relay, the 100 yard breaststroke (Samuel Kastan), 100 yard freestyle (River Maners), 200 yard breaststroke (Samuel Kalenowski), 500 yard freestyle (Klinchin), 100 yard butterfly (Rose).

The women's team fell to the host Spartans 171-86 and to Firebirds 183-85.

Women's event winners:

The women's team also had a second-place finish in the 400 yard freestyle relay, and third-place finishers in the 200 yard medley relay, 50 yard freestyle (Gabby Anich), 100 yard butterfly (Nethmi Bopearatchy), 400 yard IM (Kristen Hampton).

Coaches Comments

Interim Head Coach Billy Bafia: "A lot of terrific swims and a lot of tough swims. We did a great job focusing still as we came out of a tough practice week. With us just getting into our taper, we should see this disparity smoothen out as we rest more and sharpen our races. I look forward to next weekend being a much stronger showing for us."

Bafia continued: "Very happy with how our divers did today. Much cleaner dives and good camaraderie from the group as they get excited to execute 11 dives at conference."

Assistant Coach Bailey Yu: "Even though we had a lot of tired swims, we had great energy and sportsmanship on deck to support our teammates and cheer for races. Great energy to have as we finish off our season. Huge shout out to Evan on the 3-meter today!"

Assistant Coach Julian Escasa: "Lots of strong races across the board. Both teams stayed competitive even through last week's tough training. As we get into the depths of our taper, we hope to continue this success that the team is having in our final dual meet and our conference championship meet."

Assistant Coach Mac Robertson: "As we prepare to rest down these next few weeks, today provided an awesome opportunity to begin preparing race mentality & strategies. With the great competition, a lot of tired swimming could be seen across the board, but we continued to claw our way to the wall."

The team captains also came away with positive thoughts on Saturday's meet:

Cameron Cramer: "I'm proud of our team for all the hard work today. These types of challenging meets are exactly what we need to prepare for conference."

Mark Klinchin: "The meet had a lot of ups and downs, but what really kept us going was the energy we kept up the entire meet. We'll carry this energy to conference for sure."

Aditi Iyer: "Lea Gore and Stephanie Ticen had some awesome swims today and we are all looking forward to their events at conference!"

Up Next

The Scarlet Hawks will host their last meet at Ekco Pool for the season this Saturday at 1pm, when they face Lake Forest College. The team will also their seniors that day. Meet time is 1:00 PM.