Swimcloud

Grand Canyon Women Defeat New Mexico State

The Grand Canyon University women's swim team today defeated New Mexico State in a Western Athletic Conference dual meet at Brophy Sports Complex in Phoenix. The Antelopes won 158.00-104.00 over the Aggies, taking first in 11 of 14 events overall.

"This was without a doubt our best win for the season and perhaps in our history," said head coach Steve Schaffer. "Our training volumes and weight room workloads are still going up and our women really stepped up big today. We had a lot of very impressive in-season swims, and it was a solid team performance from top to bottom. We won 11 of the 14 events, and three of our freshmen won seven of those."

"Our women have embraced the challenge for moving up to Division I and are showing that they will have a very bright future," Schaffer explained. "Iryna Glavnyk was very impressive in her first meet with us. She won both the 100- and 200-backstroke events and led off both of our winning relays. She set the team record in the 100-back, leading off the 400-medley relays, and another record in the 200-back."
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GCU got the meet started with a 1-3 finish in the 400-medley relay. The squad of Glavnyk, Kathleen Robertson, Hannah Kastigar, and Jovanna Koens won the event with a time of 3:51.74. Glavnyk set the team record in the 100 backstroke with a lead off split of 55.27.

Inha Kotsur followed up with the win in the 1000-free after touching the wall in 10:22.53, the fourth-best time among WAC swimmers.

Samantha Magnani won the 200-free in a time of 1:55.10, while newcomer Glavnyk was victorious in the 100-backstroke after racing to a 55.93 finish.

Kastigar continued her streak of winning, this time with a victory in the 200-fly by nearly six seconds at 2:01.66, the fourth-best in the WAC. She already owns the best time in the conference at 1:58.06.

Koens and Catherine Polito went 1-2 in the 50-free, clocking in at 23.85 seconds and 24.98 seconds, respectively. Koens added another win to today's resume in the 100-free with a time of 52.65 seconds, while Polito was just behind her teammate at 54.18 seconds.

Glavynk picked up her second school record of the day, this time in the 200-backstroke with a time of 1:59.82, the second-fastest time in the WAC.

The 'Lopes took the top-three spots in the 500-free led by Kastigar's swim of 5:01.86. Kotsur came in second at 5:03.14, followed by Magnani at 5:11.00. Kastigar won her third event of the day in the 400-IM after clocking in at 4:24.30, the second-fastest in the conference behind her own top swim of 4:15.92.

The women closed out the dual with a win in the 400-free relay behind the efforts of Glavynk, Polito, Magnani, and Koens.

With no men's team to race, the GCU men grabbed the opportunity to have a unique  intraquad meet. "Our guys had a full day of racing today," said Schaffer. "We made all of the events into relays for them to make it kind fun, and they all raced eight or nine events, so it was a good practice to keep us in racing shape for the conference championships.They had some pretty good times, the most impressive of which was Ivan Nechunaev's lead off of the 4x100 IM relay where he set a new team record of 49.77 in the 100 IM."

The GCU Women will end their dual meet season with a meet against Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff on February 8th.

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