Returning to Ashland University for the third and final session of the Ashland Invite, the TU Men's & Women's Swimming and Diving Team continued to build upon the success from the prior two sessions on Friday. The lone Saturday session saw nine swimmers place higher than 8th place. Overall the Dragons men's and women's squads finished fourth.
"I felt that was a a good session for us. We have continually had problems with being ready for morning sessions and not using our warm-up efficiently. I think the swimmers made some changes today which is a positive sign," said Head Coach Noah Moran.
"This session probably was the best set-up for us in terms of events. The 200 distances for strokes, and both the 100 and 1000 freestyle events match where we are training wise right now. As a team, we are increasing that important aerobic capacity level and will switch over for more specificity later. They were physically beat this week from both wet and dry practices. They may not admit it, but I think most of them are fatigued to say the least. Being able to compete consistently through those three sessions while tired was a good sign. Overall we did what we needed to do. The team has a starting point to look at and we will improve from there."
Starting the day with the 1000 Freestyle, two Dragons placed in the top eight for the men, Matt Laporte in fourth and Seth Tessmer eighth (10:14.53 and 11:09.61 respectively). James Keen matched Laporte's placing in the Men's 200 backstroke with a time of 2:02.51. Olivia Salome dominated her swim in the Women's 100 Freestyle, winning the event by over a full second clocking a :53.68. Her Brazilian counterparts Lucas Merigue and Ygor Zanardo followed that by placing second and eighth in the Men's 100 Freestyle. Merigue swam the event in :48.42 while Zanardo went a :50.59. In the Women's 200 Breaststroke Melinda Ulbrecht finished with a 2:45.09 for seventh place. The Men's 200 Breaststroke saw Petko Toromanov swim an interesting race to finish second place in 2:13.13. Finishing the top eight scoring for the Dragons was Mari Johnson in the Women's 200 Butterfly with a 2:16.44 for a third place finish.
The next meet for the Dragons will be Saturday, October 22, at home against Gannon University.