WKU Swimming and Diving Teams Take Down Xavier

The WKU swimming and diving teams continued their impressive seasons by defeating Xavier on Saturday.  The women's team defeated Xavier 165-104 while the men's team won by a score of 166-110.  

"I was actually extremely pleased with our performances today," head coach Bruce Marchionda said.  "We made a conscious effort to not back off our training for our dual meets.  So, to get up and swim like they did today with as tired as they are is a very good sign as to what is to come at the end of the year.  Today was highlighted by two pool records.  Claire Alexandre broke the pool record by almost four seconds in the 500 Free and Claire Donahue broke the pool record in the 100 Fly.  Both had very impressive times for this time of the year.  We try to use the speed as a learning opportunity to learn a little bit about how we need to swim races and they were very good about doing some of the things that we talked about last week."

The women's team kicked off the meet by winning the 200 medley relay.  The foursome of Laurel Chaney, Stephanie Martin, Claire Donahue and Meredith Dement posted a time of 1:46.19 to win the event.  WKU also placed second and fourth in the relay.

In the freestyle events, WKU's Krista Mantay took top honors in the 1000 Free after posting a time of 10:33.48.  The Lady Toppers followed up that event with a win in the 200 Free behind the efforts of Maggie Skiles.  Skiles finished with a time of 1:55.88 to win the event.  Claire Alexandre went on to pick up two wins for the Lady Toppers in the 50 and 500 Free.  In the 500 Free, she set a new pool record finishing with a time of 4:56.29 and in the 50 Free she picked up the win with a time of 24.02.  Dement made it a clean sweep for WKU in the 100 Free finishing with a time of 52.95.

Claire Donahue also set a new pool record in the 100 Fly posting a time of 54.28.  In other action, Hilary Mishler picked up wins in the 100 and 200 Back with times of 57.00 and 2:03.94 respectively.  Stephanie Martin, Chelsea Stephens and Kara McCarthy finished in first through third place in the 100 Breast with Martin pacing the Lady Toppers with a time of 1:06.52.  Martin also picked up the victory in the 200 Breast with a time of 2:21.95.  In the 200 Fly, the Lady Toppers added another win to their total after Chelsea Larsen touched the wall in 2:12.46 to take home first place.

The Hilltoppers also picked up their first win of the day in the 200 medley relay.  The team of Cameron Watkins, Luke Musser, Nick Slattery and Billy Kunkel posted a time of 1:34.01 to pick up the win.

Sean Penhale had a big day for the Hilltoppers winning the 1000 Free with a time of 9:28.36 and the 500 Free with a time of 4:38.30.

Kunkel picked up his first individual win of the day in the 200 Free with a time of 1:41.61 while in the 100 Back, Watkins posted a time of 51.93 to take first place.  Kinkel then went on to win the 100 Free with a time of 46.61.  Musser also added a win to the Hilltoppers' total with a first place victory in the 100 Breast with a time of 57.12 and Cameron Higdon picked up a win in the 200 Fly after finishing with a time of 1:53.11.  Musser's second victory of the day came in the 200 Breast when he touched the wall in 2:03.39.

Zane Rowland added another win to the Hilltoppers with a win in the 50 Free (21.32) and David Menchinger won the 200 Back with a time of 1:54.14.

In diving action, Caitlin Dean won the one-meter women's competition after posting 244.65 points.  In the men's one-meter competition, Jim Ritter racked up 258.08 points to take first place.  In the women's three-meter competition it was Kylie Ruiz who picked up the win after finishing with 229.50 points.  Ritter made it a sweep in the men's three-meter competition after recording 298.65.

The WKU men's and women's swimming and diving teams will continue action next weekend when they host the Hilltopper Invite on Nov. 19-21 in Bowling Green.