Tiger Southwest Shootout Invitational

We traveled to the DFW metroplex this past Friday morning in order to attend the TU Southwestern Shootout Invitational, an event we invented a bunch of years ago to give us a good competitive meet just before Thanksgiving. This year, we hosted eleven schools representing six different states at the Carroll ISD Natatorium in Southlake, TX. Coach Bill Christensen (North Texas Nadadores) served as meet director, and again did an outstanding job coordinating all facets of the meet.

We swam pretty well. Not great, but a pretty solid collection of performances after several weeks of hard training. Our women took top team honors, outscoring Mesa State, Grand Canyon University, and Centenary by a 814.5 - 740.5 - 673.5 - 601.5 margin. Mesa State took the men's meet, by outgunning Centenary, Trinity, and Grand Canyon to the tune of 827 - 796 - 582 - 572.5.

TWSD Carbo Loads for the Shootout

No swim team is complete without a little team bonding, and no team bonding experience is complete without a little pasta. Or in this case, a lot of pasta! Senior swimmers Leigh-Anne Ladymon, Mary West, Kristen Zinser, and Sara Griffis hosted a pasta dinner for the women's swim team the night before leaving for the Trinity University Southwestern Shootout.
-Assistant Coach Leta

Seniors Kristen Zinser and Leigh-Anne Ladymon display some of the eats!

Morgan Briggs, Mary Price, and Ana Price as they await the call to dinner.

FYs Marisa Olmo, Melanie Gustafson, and Meghan Varner.

Mary Price digs into the yummy lasagna that Leigh-Anne and Mary made for the first time ever.

Who wants a cookie? Rachel Berude, Marisa, and Melanie do!

Lisa Tucci using her muscles to get a little dessert.

Trinity vs McMurry University

Saturday was a good day. We put in a tough, challenging week of training and then finished that off with a dual meet against McMurry of Abilene. Everyone was up early for a 90 minute practice, enjoyed a good breakfast, and then caught some rest prior to the meet’s 1:30 pm start time. Admissions had a “Trinity-In-Focus” session for prospective students going all morning and up through mid-afternoon, so we had several recruits from both Texas and around the country here visiting. That was cool!

We moved some swimmers around a little bit and got to see some close races, with a number of our entries counting as exhibition swims rather than maxing out the point tally. Final score for the women’s meet was 129 to 90, while our men tallied a 144 to 62 point win.

Event winners for our women’s team included Morgan Briggs, Mary Price, Rachel Berude, Marisa Olmo, Leslie Butts, Lisa Tucci, Melanie Gustafson, Leigh-Anne Ladymon and Ana Price. Sophomore Madison Kahler captured wins in both diving events, her first collegiate “double” as a Tiger.

Our men scored a number of wins as well. Andrew Battles, Sean Fronczak, Drew Cauthorn, Michael Patton, Lucas Belury, Aaron shaver, Alex Miranda, CJ Robison, Mike Brew, Matt Wey, and Zach Dielmann al earned first place finishes in one or more races. Miranda’s 9:54.35 time in the 1000 freestyle may have been the best men’s swim of the day, with Battle’s conference leading 100 backstroke (54.32), and Fronczak’s 200 IM (2:02.83) as well as his two fast relay legs right there contending. Senior Andrew Snead led the diving field on both the 1-meter and the 3-meter boards.

This next weekend we travel to Dallas to attend an invitational meet we “invented” several years ago. Hosted by Carroll ISD in Southlake (TX), the 2010 Trinity Southwest Shootout will include 11 colleges and universities from, Texas, Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. The three session affair will be both fun and fast!!

-Coach Ryan

TU - UTPB - UIW Dual Meets

This past weekend was a tough one. We've been training hard, most of the team is pretty tired, and almost everyone has been dealing with tests/exams/papers/etc. Such is college life. Weeks like this are unavoidable. How swimmers handle them is important. Managing one's time well and staying on task is critical to having a good season (September to February or March). Sometimes it's no picnic - but it is important to keep trying to do things RIGHT, no matter what.

Yesterday, we swam at 9am (4,300 yds) and then met at the University of the Incarnate Word Natatorium at 1:30 pm for an afternoon double dual meet with the UIW Cardinals and the University of Texas at Permian Basin. Both of our opponents are NCAA Division II programs, and the host's men are going to have a shot at an NCAA team title this year. We knew we would see some fast swimming. Our women outscored UTPB 153 to 109, while coming up on the short end of the scoring with UIW (96 to 179). UTPB clipped our guys 146 to 120 and UIW did likewise to the tune of 200 to 76. We had a couple of conference champions absent from our men's line-up (Andrew Battles and Spencer Bard), but it was still a pretty good shellacking.

We had some good racing and some noteable performances. Melanie Gustafson had three good races (200 fly, 500 free, and the 400 IM) and is proving herself to be a tough cookie, both in practices and meets. Morgan Briggs, Jennifer Ince, Rachel Berude, Kristen Zinser, and Lisa Tucci have been working hard and raced well on Saturday, contributing to our win over UTPB. Leigh-Anne Ladymon, who has been struggling with injury this fall, is rehabilitating well and getting stronger week by week. She recorded a 1:01.59 in the 100 butterfly yesterday, which is exciting to see. She and Mary West are going to be crtitical pieces in our conference meet line-up this coming February. Meghan Varner's times didn't reflect the training speed we've seen in practice, and her timing was off on a couple of her finishes, but we are confident she's going to help us big time at season's end. Ditto Leslie Butts, who has been down with illness, but who has been working hard in practice. Our divers, of course, did their thing and did it pretty well. First-year Kathryn Sheldon beat senior All-American Hayley Emerick and sophomore Ruth Hahn on the 1-meter board, leading TU to a 1 - 2 - 3 finish. Hayley then snagged the 3-meter win, with a solid 285.85 point performance. We went 1 - 2 - 3 there as well, with Ruth and Katie trailing Trinity's defending NCAA champion on her best board.

Lucas Belury was the top Trinity performer in the men's meet yesterday - hitting a 10:01.67 in the 1000 freestyle and recording a 4:50.10 in the 500 freestyle. Both are conference-best performances to date. Too bad Andrew Battles wasn't here to race him, although UIW men were plenty fast in both events. With the exception of Matt Wey's 100 breaststroke and Alex Miranda's 200 butterfly (1:57.42), we were pretty uninspiring with our racing going into the meet's first diving break. On the bright side, Aaron Shaver, CJ Robison, Michael Patton, Eric Bassett, and company have been training well. They're tired, but we still need to see them step up and RACE on game day. Aaron and CJ came back in the 100 and did just that, which was good to see. Sean Fronczak's 200 backstroke (2:02.46) was a better race than his 100, and Arthur Daigh chased him home to record a 2:05.77. Alex followed his solid 200 fly with good performances in both the 200 back and the 400 IM (4:18.18). Matt hit a season PR in the 200 breaststroke, and both Zach and Drew Cauthorn popped good 100 fly swims. We got better as the evening progressed. Andrew Snead and Matt Hawley led our divers, with Andrew twice taking runner-up honors to UIW's All-American Justin McDonald.

Next meet up is McMurry University on Saturday the 13th. Our admissions office is conducting a Trinity-in-Focus session that day, so we will be hosting several prospective student-athletes who have elected to visit our campus and spend time getting to know our team and the whole Trinity scene. The weather has been beautiful lately. We'll be keeping our fingers crossed that we'll be blessed with another glorious weekend. GO TIGERS!

-Coach Ryan