The Tiffin Men's & Women's Swimming & Diving Teams took their chance to compete in the first meet of the season on Friday at Ashland University against Ashland, Northern Michigan University, and University of Findlay. "Swimming this early in the season is fairly difficult. We really are not fully prepared to race in the way I know we are capable of. But this is a good opportunity to swim against many of the GLIAC schools that provide such great competition at the end of the year. We want to find a way to be better mentally while competing hard," Head Coach Noah Moran said about the competition.
The meet format is a two day, three session format through the weekend. The Dragons swam two sessions on Friday, and will complete the competition with the final session on Saturday morning.
Regarding the first session, the teams swam well with several team members scoring points for the Dragons. Of note were Matt Laporte, seventh in the Men's 500 Freestyle in 4:59.43 and Petko Toromanov finishing in eighth place in the Men's 200 Individual Medley clocking a 2:05.69. The highlights of the session go to juniors Morgan Dunleavy and Olivia Salome. Dunleavy dove to a second place finish on the one meter board, just shy of the qualifying score for the NCAA National Championships by less than four points with a score of 251.85. Salome provided the only win for the Dragons when she touched-out the competition by one one hundreth of a second in the Women's 50 Freestyle. Her winning time was :24.87.
The second session saw more scoring from the swimmers and diver. Matt Campbell started off finishing the Men's 400 Individual Medley in seventh clocking a personal best time of 5:12.81 for seventh place. Lucas Meringue got his hand on the wall and into the top eight in the Men's 200 Freestyle with a 1:53.69. Melinda Ulbrecht finished the Women's 100 Breaststroke in third with a time of 1:10.75. James Keen and Dunleavy took a fifth place with James' coming in the Men's 100 Backstroke (:56.59) and Dunleavy's score of 188.75 in the three meter diving event. Two swimmers narrowly missed wins in their events. Salome in the Women's 200 Freestyle made for an exciting swim with her second place time of 1:56.90. Toromanov also went back and forth in the Men's 100 Breaststroke with a solid finish and swim at 1:00.35. One Dragon was able to hold everyone off and win her event. Anastasiia Kvitchenko touched first in the Women's 100 Butterfly at 1:00.93.
"We have had a pretty good two weeks for our program, from coming together as a team, to recruiting, to just great training. I am happy with where we are," Coach Moran said. "We made a few errors which the team recognized and adjusted to from the first to the second session. The team has made a great effort to positively reinforce and help each other make corrections. This is a major difference from where we were last year. Looking to continue that Saturday where I think we can be better than in the first two sessions."
Swimming and diving will finish competition in Ashland Saturday morning at 10:00 A.M.