Both the women’s and men’s swim teams improved their records after last weekend’s solid win against SUNY Brockport.
The women defeated the Golden Eagles 141-99, extending their record to 2-1, while the men out swam the competition 131-90, bringing their current record to 1-2.
According to last season’s statisitics, the Yellowjackets expected to win easily.
SUNY Brockport was not traditionally a challenge, thus giving some of the new swimmers a chance to compete and a chance to swim different events than normal.
“We expected to win both meets, knowing that we had better numbers and looking at past results,” Benker-O’Brien said.
“We were looking for gutsy performances,” she added. “After a long, hard week of practice, we were not resting at all for this meet and did not expect phenomenal times, [but] I think we did very well.”
Even though both UR squads won by a large margin, there were some surprisingly close races during the meet, but the Yellowjackets stepped up to the challenge.
“I thought that we really came together when the pressure was on and did a good job of supporting each other,” senior captain Brad Vdovjak said.
There were several standouts at this week’s meet including junior Jacque Staple, who won the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 5:35.87. Staple, who swims both the breaststroke and freestyle, has been an integral part of the Yellow-jacket’s team since her freshman year.
Staple has already claimed her place on the women’s all-time record board in three different events ? the 50, 100 and 200-yard breaststroke and much more is expected from her this season.
Other notable swimmers for the women’s team were sophomore Tiffany Siu, freshman Ann Richards, junior Kristen Broderick and senior diver Kelly Coulehan.
Siu won both the 1000-yard freestyle in 11:29.93 and the 200-yard backstroke in 2:20.72. Richards swam 2:22.34 in the 200-IM and 2:21.20 in the 200-fly to beat her opponents, while Broderick won the 100 and 200-freestyle events with times of 58.73 and 2:10.5 respectively. Coulehan won both the 1-meter and 3-meter diving competitions.
Sophomore Ryan Montgomery, freshman Richard Bailey and junior diver diver Travis Acker all made contributions to the men’s team this past weekend.
Montgomery won both the 200-yard IM and 100-yard freestyle with times of 2:06.43 and 49.94. Both of his times were just off of his personal bests. Montgomery was also part of the winning 4×100 medley relay.
Bailey swam 2:26.96 to win the 200-yard breaststroke. Acker won the 1-meter diving competition.
The Yellowjackets will be hosting in the Harvest Relays Saturday at 10 a.m. and Benker-O’Brien is looking forward to a good time at this big tournament.
“Harvest Relays is a fun meet,” she said. “It is another meet where we can really watch some of our new people compete and a meet for the older swimmers to swim ‘off’ events, or events that they do not focus on.”
Marden can be reached at lmarden@campustimes.org.
