The SMU women’s swimming and diving team honored six seniors prior to Friday evening’s meet against North Texas, and went on to win the event, 132-109, at the Mansfield ISD Natatorium. The Mustangs finish 2015-16 dual-meet action with a 4-2 record, while the Mean Green fell to 7-4 to close the season.
SMU won nine of 13 events, taking all five before the first dive break. Juniors Marne Erasmus (200 fly) and Tara-Lynn Nicholas (200 breast) each posted NCAA B standards, with Erasmus doing so for the first time in that event. In all, 10 Mustangs posted career-best times at the event.
Head Coach Steve Collins On The Performance
“We wanted this meet and weekend to help us prepare for conference, and we felt like we did a good job with that today. We knew that North Texas was going to be a strong team after beating TCU last week, and the girls stepped up and did a really good job.”
Relay Action
The Ponies picked up wins in both relays at the event, beginning the meet with a 1:41.01 in the 200-yard medley relay. To close the meet, SMU’s 200-yard freestyle team clocked a 1:33.52 for the victory.
200 medley relay: Tiffany Sudarma, Nicholas, Erasmus, Hannah Rogers
200 free relay: Rogers, Erasmus, Adri Santa, Vicky Cunningham
Freestyle
The Mustangs won four of five freestyle events, with Cunningham picking up a pair in the 100 and 200 distances. Maddie Hoch opened individual events cruising to victory over eight seconds ahead of her closest competitor with a 10:09.96, and went on to finish as the runner-up in the 500 distance. In the 50, Rogers picked up maximum points with a 23.37. Nicholas (50 free), Santa (100 free) and Manasso (500 free) also finished in the top three of their respective events.
Butterfly
A two-time All-American in the 100 distance, Erasmus defeated the field in the 200 with a career-best, NCAA B standard 1:59.78, moving her from the fourth fastest time to the second fastest in the American Athletic Conference. Anna Cheesbrough (second) and Kathleen Charron (fifth) also scored for the Ponies.
Breaststroke
In the final individual event of the night, Nicholas turned in a season-best 2:13.10 in the 200, a time that currently leads The American and keeps her under the NCAA B standard. Teammate Kirsty McLauchlan rounded out the event’s top three touching in 2:19.43.
Backstroke
Anna Volchkov was the top scorer in the 200-yard distance clocking a 2:00.11 for runner-up honors.
Individual Medley
Adri Santa clocked a personal-best 2:04.09 to pace the field in the 200 distance. The sophomore narrowly out-touched junior Ursa Bezan , who also posted a career best time of 2:04.53. Volchkov also scored for SMU in the event, picking up fourth-place points.
Diving
Lauren Lamb posted a pair of second-place finishes for a total of eight points toward the Mustangs’ team score.
1-meter: 226.12; 3-meter: 225.74
Head Diving Coach Jim Stillson On Lamb’s Performance
“Lauren did a really good job on both boards. Going into this we knew she was going to be very competitive with all of their divers, and she did a tremendous job and really stepped up. On 1-meter, she got herself in a hole, but then was tough as nails and climbed back up into second place and almost caught first. On 3-meter, she was a little more steady and only made a few minor mistakes. I’m very proud of what she did and she really competed well when she needed to. It was a great meet.”
Senior Night
Caitlin Gutschenritter, Elizabeth Krane, Eleonor Lindborg, Madison Meyer, Tiffany Sudarma and Anna Volchkov were honored prior to the meet. These Mustang seniors have finished in the top three of the conference in each year on the Hilltop, including first-place finishes at the 2015 AAC Championship and the 2012 Conference USA Championship. In the classroom, the Mustangs have been honored as a CSCAA Scholar All-America team each semester, and were named the team Excellence Award winners by The American conference in 2014.
Collins On The Mustang Seniors
“It’s a great a great group of girls who have done so much for our team and our program. They’re just an amazing group of people and we’ll be sorry that they’re leaving, but we don’t have to let them go just yet so we’re happy about that.”
Who’s Got Next
SMU is back in action on Saturday as it once again hosts UNT, in addition to Oklahoma Baptist and Wayland Baptist in a pre-conference time trial event. Racing is slated to begin at 2 p.m. CT in Mansfield. Live results can be found on the Meet Mobile app.
What To Expect
“Tomorrow could be a very mixed bag. They’re going to have the opportunity to swim potentially an event that they’re going to swim at conference, or it could be a situation where it’s an event they haven’t been in because we’ve been in a lot of tough meets. With some people it will be really focused on some key races for conference, and we’ll have some people that are trying to put up some best times in their off events.”
North Texas
The North Texas swimming and diving team put together several good swims and dives, including four first-place finishes, but they came up just short, falling to Metroplex rival SMU by a score of 132-109 on Friday night at Mansfield Natatorium.
Those swims and dives included an NCAA B time standard for freshman Rebekah Bradley, who picked up her ninth first-place finish with a time of 1:58.03 in the 200-yard backstroke. Her time also made her the second-fastest swimmer in Conference USA and the second-fastest swimmer in North Texas history. She joins sophomore Claudia Kitching, who holds two NCAA B time standards in the 200-yard breaststroke.
Freshman Sara Whelan won her first individual event with a team season-best and career-best time of 4:53.91 in the 500-yard freestyle. She closed strong in the event, out-touching her competitor from SMU with a final 50-yard split of 26.96 and a final 100-yard split of 56.99.
“You can’t control the other team,” head coach Brendon Bray said. “SMU is a great team, they’re a top-25 team for a reason, but we swam great tonight. We swam unbelievable times. We had many times better than lifetime bests and we had many times better than when we were rested at the fall championship meet. We were much better than we were the weekend before against TCU. That’s all you can control. In swimming, you can’t do things based on the other team.
“Our program took another huge step forward tonight. We had so many really good swims. We have a couple of things that we can learn from. We had a couple of touch-outs that might have swung some points our way. If we maybe had one or two touch-outs in our favor, we might have won the meet. I’m really happy with the team.”
After just missing an NCAA zone qualifying score on the 1-meter against TCU, junior Samantha Scheck swept the diving events against SMU with a first-place finish in both the 1-meter (235.72) and 3-meter competition (237.22). In other diving action, freshman Averie Ruiz posted a career-best score of 225.90 to finish third in the 1-meter competition.
“Our divers showed that they can persevere through a quick turnaround from last week,” diving coach Mark Murdock said. ”They did well mentally. It’s tough to expect it to happen right away again, but they showed some consistency tonight. Samantha is doing a lot better. She’s starting take every correction in and focus on the little things that will help her increase her scores.”
Other highlights included the 200-yard medley relay and 200-yard freestyle relay, where North Texas placed second in both events, clocking the second-fastest times by a North Texas relay team and the third-fastest time in Conference USA this season in each event. North Texas also finished second and third in the 1000-yard freestyle and 200-yard freestyle.
North Texas finishes the dual-meet portion of its season with a 7-4 dual-meet record and a winning percentage of .636, tied for the second-most dual-meet wins and the second-best winning percentage in school history. It's also the best marks under Bray.
