The Falcon swim team started its conference season with a splash.
The Falcons (1-0, 1-0 Mid-American Conference) got the bad taste out of their mouth after their defeat from Akron to end the season last year.
This time around, things were a little different.
The Falcons won the meet 160-134, winning 10 of the day’s 14 events. This was a good start for the new head coach Petra Martin.
“This win helps the girls mentally to gain confidence,” Martin said. “The girls are starting to digest some technical things, but of course there still are things that we need to improve on.”
Junior swimmer Vicky Yu was involved with four of the 10 victories Saturday. Yu won both the 100-and 200-yard butterfly and was also on the winning relay teams in the 200 medley and the 400 freestyle.
Junior Sarah Reinink said winning the first MAC conference meet was impressive and gives the swim team confidence moving forward.
“We have really been working hard and need to keep working on our race strategy, relay starts and turns to get where we want to be,” Reinink said.
Sophomore Emily Bennet also competed in four of the 10 wins.
Like Yu, Bennet was in the two winning relay teams and won the 100 and 200 yard freestyle races.
In both races she was trailing the leader, but in the end was determined to win and won the 100 yard freestyle over Katie Miles from Akron by 13 one-hundredths of a second.
Bennet won the 200 freestyle by an even closer margin of 3 one-hundredths of a second, again coming from behind.
The swim team had a lot of energy going into the meet and were very excited to get racing again.
“It was good to see how we responded to Petra’s training, and I think we just did a really good job,” Bennet said.
Sophomore Alexis Kain swept away the competition in the two breaststroke events.
In the 100-yard version, she won by a full four seconds, while in the 200 she led a trio of Falcon swimmers to sweep the top three spots in the event. She was also a part of the winning 200 medley team.
Some other Falcon winners included Megan Bomicino in the 1000-yard freestyle by nearly nine seconds, while Alexa Harris was a winner in the 200-yard backstroke.
Martin was pleased with the performance, but with success comes room for improvement.
“We still need to touch up on some things, including our turns at the walls, trying to gain strength and power off of them,” Martin said. “This week of practice before our next meet on Saturday we will get in what we need to get done.”
The Falcons’ next meet will be Saturday at Ohio.
