After a solid showing against UC Santa Cruz in their last time out, the Pioneers swim team is ready to take on the second half of the season.
On Nov. 19 and in their most recent match, CSU East Bay Pioneers defeated the UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, outscoring them by a score of 142-135 at the Pioneer pool.
Pioneer’s swim team head coach Ben Loorz described this match-up as a much anticipated dual meet in the past.
Front leading swimmer for the Pioneers this season Jenel Lopez led East Bay with a solid performance with three first place finishes.
Lopez broke her own school record in the 100-yard freestyle as she posted the 13th fastest time of 52.92 in Division II this season, breaking her old mark set just a month before at Mills College. She recorded times of 24.46 seconds and one minute, 56 seconds to capture the 50-yard freestyle and 200-yard freestyle, respectively.
“Breaking my record again was pretty awesome, especially doing it at our pool, but I was even happier because that’s my personal best time ever and I think it just shows how hard I’m working and I have a great coaching staff behind me,” said Lopez.
“Overall I was very happy about our win against Santa Cruz because it really showed how we work together as a team, because we had to win some close races. They had the numbers but we had the depth and it was a sense of having to protect our home pool and having support from our family and friends.”
Freshman Alyssa Tenney also played a pivotal role in the Pioneers defeat of Santa Cruz as she was victorious in the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 2:12.
Tenney earned her second first place finish of the meet in the 200-yard individual medley in 2:14 and also placed a Division II top-25 finish with a time of 1:00 in the 100-yard backstroke, good for second place.
Lopez, along with Tenney and the rest of the Pioneers swim squad, will open up the second half of their season at home against the University of Nevada this Saturday, Dec. 3.
“Nevada is a really great team,” said Lopez. “They have some good fast swimmers and we will have some competition so there should be some good races. We are going in it with the same mentality of protecting our home pool and winning the close races. I’m getting a chance to swim an event that I usually don’t swim and save my other races for the Finis Invite next weekend.”
Over the winter break, the Pioneers will be hard at work as from Dec. 10 to 20 they will be competing at the Finis Invitational in Long Beach.
The rest of the season schedule should be quite competitive for the Pioneers, but the much improved team from a season ago has confidence in their abilities.
“We are really coming together as a team more and more and we always appreciate the support that comes out to watch us,” said Lopez. I’m excited to see how much we can accomplish before conference and at conference. I think were going to have more swimmers breaking records and I think our small but mighty team will surprise a lot of people.”
