CSU East Bay women’s swim team accomplished their team goals last week at the 2013 NCAA Division II Swimming and Diving Championships in Birmingham, Ala.,
The Pioneers were the first women swimmers from the school to reach nationals since 1992.
The team entered the meet last Wednesday, only two weeks following their PCSC Conference Championships, with a positive mindset and four goals they were seeking to accomplish throughout the four-day competition.
Head coach Ben Loorz told The Pioneer that the team’s first goal was to not be intimidated by the national level of competition. Loorz considers this goal to have been met following the team’s significant turnaround after the first day of the meet.
Having faced a disqualification Wednesday morning in the 200-medley relay, Loorz and the team consider the first day of the meet one of the toughest days to get through.
“The first day was a little rough; I was a bit nervous at that point about how the week was going to go,” said Loorz. “We actually performed better and better as the meet went on. The girls had a great tenacity and rebounded from not such a great day. They didn’t let the swim ruin their mentality and just kept pushing hard from there.”
The team’s second goal was to make it back to finals each day of the meet. The team achieved this goal several times by competing in five finals out of the eight events they entered during the four-day competition.
The team considers the highlights of the meet to be their relay swims; the most significant was the 400 freestyle relay they swam on Saturday night. The girls finished ninth in the prelims with the time of 3:27.78 and broke the school record by more than a second.
Their swim during prelims guaranteed them a second swim in the consolation finals where they were in a dogfight for the top seed in their heat.
“The race was very exciting to watch overall. Florida’s team ended up placing their fastest swimmers first in the order of their relay team, so they were out way ahead in the beginning,” Loorz said. “We placed our fastest swimmers last in order, so at the end of the race we were catching them like crazy!”
The Pioneers ended up taking 10th place, second in the B final, while shaving 1.3 seconds off the record they set in the morning and 2.6 seconds from the original record they set at the PCSC Championships two weeks earlier.
The Pioneers had a successful finish in the 200 freestyle relay Thursday as well, finishing sixth in the prelims and eighth in the finals with a time of 1:34.74. Their eighth place finish at finals allowed them to reach their third goal of receiving All-American swimming honors.
“It felt amazing just because the past two years I’ve been working really hard and it was always one of my goals to go to Nationals,” said senior Jenel Lopez. “It was awesome to be able to reach my goal and actually do well there. We stepped up our team efforts to make it to finals and swam as fast as we could.”
Lopez and junior Caitlin DeNise also received the opportunity to swim in the consolation finals. Lopez placed 13th in the 200 freestyle finals with a time of 1:51.62 and DeNise placed 12th in the 100 fly finals with a time of 56.53. These finishes granted the girls Honorable Mention All-American consideration.
The team’s last goal was to simply have fun while they were at the meet supporting East Bay, which they accomplished while they watched other sports participate in competitions during their down time between races.
East Bay finished the meet with 55 team points overall, tying them for 21st place in team standings with Indianapolis. With only four swimmers competing in the meet, the team considers this a great accomplishment.
“You don’t really know what you’re going to accomplish two weeks after Conference when you’ve swam the best times of your life,” said Lopez. “It was pretty nice to go to Nationals and get best times again. It made us feel like all of our hard work paid off.”
