Sports

GVL/Lindsey Waggoner
GVSU women's breast stroke swimmer fights hard in the meet against Indianapolis University in the meet on Friday afternoon in Allendale, Mich.

Swim teams split victories against Wayne State

By Emanuel Johnson GVL Sports Editor
1/10/2010

Putting conference, regional and national meets aside, the dual meet with Wayne State University is the most-anticipated meet for the Grand Valley State University men's and women's swim teams every year.

"Wayne State is our biggest rival," said GVSU head coach Andy Boyce. "We go back and forth with them every year, and we try to bring everything that we have against them whether it be in conference, national or dual meets."

In this past weekend's meet with the Warriors, the men managed to nab a 155-145 victory while the women lost 189.5-110.5.

The men's victory was not the product of a late meet surge -- things between the two teams were neck and neck from the early events, Boyce said.

"Everything was really close," he said. "We had a couple races that we won by a couple hundredths of a second, and they had a few, too. That's probably best illustrated in the men's 1, 000 meter freestyle. We might have taken first, second and third, but the difference between second place and fourth place was less than two-tenths of a second."

The Lakers saw first place finishes in seven different events, including a 200 meter medley relay team that opened the meet with a first place time of 1:32.94. By the final event, the Lakers had already accumulated enough points to hold off Wayne State's first place finish in the 400 meter freestyle relay.

"We really wanted to get them," said sophomore freestyle swimmer David Hayhow. "This was a meet that we target at the beginning of the year because they barely beat us last year, and winning it will give us a big confidence boost when we get to the conference meet."

While the women did not enjoy as much success as the men, there were a few bright spots.

Sophomore diver Karen Verbrugge tallied the only two first place finishes for the Lakers with her performance in both the 1 meter and 3 meter diving events. On her way to winning the events, she broke the school record for 3 meter diving with a score of 281.50.

"It was cool to get the record," she said. "Three meter diving is kind of a struggle for me sometimes, but I'm glad that I can still come out and perform well. I didn't think it was my best performance since I added in a few new dives for this meet, but I think the new dives actually helped me get a higher score."

She called her new 3 meter dive "a back 1 1/2 with 2 1/2 flips."

Freshman swimmer Kelsey Vermeer had the chance to take first in the 50 meter freestyle event, but she was edged out by 0.4 seconds and took second place instead.

"We have the potential -- we just need to fine tune a few things," Boyce said. "To have the team come in and swim fast in the way that they did (Saturday) is very encouraging for us as we get closer and closer to the conference meet. We're looking forward to seeing Wayne State there."

The Lakers will next see action when they host the University of Findlay at the GVSU pool.

sports@lanthorn.com

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