By Zachary Waltz
Staff Writer
The men’s swimming and diving team beat the Binghamton Bearcats last week by a final score of 152-88. The team hosts Niagara in their next meet today at 6 p.m.
Coach Sean McNamee said the meet against Niagara will serve an important role in building the team because of two new swimmers joining this semester.
“We’ve got two newcomers to the team this semester, one returning and one truly new,” said McNamee about sophomores Ripley Danner and Viacheslav Shchukin. “So we have to get some entry times and event experience for them since they haven’t been here racing over the past four months. We have to jam into two meets what the rest of the team has accomplished in four months.”
Sophomore backstroker and freestyler Vatslav Lets said that the meet against Niagara is the final meet before the team starts to officially taper their workouts, which means practices will get progressively easier in preparation for the A-10s.
“This is the last week before we officially start tapering,” Lets said. “That means everyone is still working hard even if they are really tired from a full semester and our training trip in Florida where we had triple practices every day.”
Lets said the team swam well considering they were coming off of their training trip to Florida over break.
“It was the weekend right after the training trip,” Lets said. “We did a pretty big amount of work over the week, especially because we knew we were going to win. We looked at it almost as a practice meet.”
Jimmy Martin came away from the Binghamton meet with two first place finishes in the 50-yard free and the 100-yard freestyle and also was a part of the gold medal winning 400-yard freestyle relay. McNamee said that Martin has been a huge leader through example, but needs to become more vocal next year as a senior.
“He’s been kind of a quiet leader,” McNamee said. “He’s a leader in the water, but we need him to become a little more vocal. He’s obviously one of our more accomplished kids, and we need to lean heavily on him starting at the conclusion of our A-10s this year.”
McNamee said the team anticipated tough competition from Binghamton.
“We actually felt as though they were going to come in and pose as a serious challenge, but that didn’t really end up coming to fruition,” McNamee said. “It ended up being more of an opportunity for us to get up and race after a month of tough training over break and getting into a championship mentality. It’s just a continual process to put us in the best position possible at the end of February.”
waltzzd12@bonaventure.edu
