By Zach Waltz
Assistant Sports Editor
The men’s swimming and diving team is coming off a 186-114 home loss to the University of Pittsburgh last Saturday.
Head coach Sean McNamee said the meet was condensed due to Pittsburgh’s travel issues. This caused a shortened warm-up time, leading to the swimmers being unprepared.
“Pitt had some travel delays which kind of changed everything,” McNamee said. “In our facility, there are a lot of challenges with warm-ups and warm-downs when you have about 100 athletes getting in the water. With their delays, it kind of threw everything up in the air. I’m not sure we were permitted our optimal scenario for preparing for the meet.”
Junior medley swimmer Ripley Danner agreed the decreased warm-up time negatively affected the Bonnies.
“We performed pretty well, and I was happy,” Danner said. “We came out strong, but we didn’t have a good opportunity to warm-up or cool-down. All in all, we performed good.”
McNamee said the team swam solidly given the circumstances, setting records in the 200-yard medley relay and the 200-yard freestyle relay. Junior freestyler and backstroker Vatslav Lets, senior freestyler and backstroker Jimmy Martin and sophomore Viacheslav Shchukin were on both teams. Sophomore breaststroker and freestyler Matthew Schutt was the fourth member of the medley team with senior freestyler and butterflyer David Paccapaniccia as the fourth member of the freestyle team.
“We swam well in certain areas,” McNamee said. “We broke two pool records in relays, which is nice. But we also had some glaring weaknesses in distance. We’re training hard at this point, which is the goal.”
McNamee said Pittsburgh deserved credit for how well they dealt with the circumstances.
“I think Pitt was actually a little better at dealing with the abnormal scenario with our pool layout than we were,” McNamee said.
The swimmers will have a bye week this weekend, but the divers will head to the Clarion Invite in Clarion, Pa. at 10 a.m. on Sunday. McNamee said the team is putting in important practices now to counteract the upcoming colder weather.
“We’re in what we consider the dog days,” McNamee said. “The weather is starting to get cold, but we’re still turning the heat up in here. (The swimmers) are beat up, tired and looking for a break, but that’s still in the distance.”
Danner said the practices wear the team down, but he added it’s important to have mental fortitude and give it all in workouts.
“It’s tough mentally and physically,” Danner said. “We really help people push through workouts. If you see a person down, you always have to be on their case. We’re all physically tired, so you have to do your best and push through it.”
McNamee said the swimmers will have very hard sets for the next week until they go to the Spire Institute in Geneva, Ohio.
“They have to stay tough mentally,” McNamee said. “Next week, it will be nice to go to our A-10 pool and have a meet with La Salle out there. Nonetheless, we’re putting our nose to the grindstone.”
