For the second week in a row, the Grand Canyon University men’s and women’s teams made the trek to California and posted notable results. This week the men and women were in Redlands, Calif. for the Redlands Invitational and both return home having won their respective events.
“This was a really good meet for our swimmers,” said head coach Steve Schaffer. “I’m not a fan of traveling to away meets two weekends in a row because it can take a toll on your performance, but everyone stepped up and raced very well this week.”
The women claimed first with a 602-point effort, while the men earned the top spot with a 446-point showing. California Baptist finished second for both the men and women’s events.
“Last year our women lost to California Baptist, but this year we won by 281 points – that’s quite a turnaround in one year,” said Schaffer. “The meet started with the women sweeping the top three places in the 200 medley relay and they never looked back from there.”
The ladies also garnered 1-4 sweeps in both the 100 breast and 200 IM. Three women had double wins:Stacey Rudman (50 and 100 free), Molly Graves(100 and 200 breast), and Rebecca Coan (200 fly and 200 IM). Mychala Lynch continued her impressive early season performance by winning the 100 fly with a time of 55.51. That mark was just 0.26 from the A cut and was more than a second faster than it took to be invited to NCAA Championship meet last year. Lynch was also part of two winning relays.
“Our men repeated their win from last year,” added Schaffer. “They were able to do it without two of our biggest point scorers, Buddy Turner and Eetu Karvonen, who were held out for health reasons.”
Double winners for the men were: Ivan Nechunaev (100 and 200 fly), Everton Kida (100 and 200 back), and Jack Feely (200 and 500 Free). Nechunaev picked up a pair of NCAA B cut times with his 50.03 in the 100 fly and 1:52.19 in the 200 fly.
Grand Canyon now gears up for its highly anticipated meet with Arizona State University in Tempe on Saturday, Oct. 27. The meet will also feature Washington State on the women’s side. The meet will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the Mona Plummer Aquatics Center on the campus of ASU.
