The No. 3 Arizona men’s swimming team and No. 4 women’s swimming team opened the year with a pair of wins during meets at the Hillenbrand Aquatic Center on Jan 4. The men raced past SMU 149-111 and Washington 163-92 as the women cruised their way to a 174-122 win over Northern Arizona, a 176-118 win over Oregon State and a 194-98 thrashing of Washington.
“”(The teams) are doing really well right now,”” said UA head coach Frank Busch. “”They’re pretty anxious for school to start and pretty tired of just training all the time. We’re just getting through with our ‘Christmas training’ where they just eat, sleep and swim and now we’re just trying to get ready for the end of the season.””
The men started won nine of the 14 events, sweeping the top two positions five times.
Albert Subirats, Marcus Titus, Darian Townsend and Jordan Smith won the 200-meter medley relay with a time of 1:29.70.
Matt Biel and David Pursley were the first pair of UA male swimmers to finish one-two as Biel won the 1000m freestyle with a time of a 9:32.09 and Pursley finished second at 9:37.72.
Subirats took down the 100m backstroke with a time of 48.27 and Cory Chitwood finished first in the 200m butterfly finishing in 1:50.98. Jordan Smith (20.71) and Nicholas Nilo (20.80) finished one-two in the 50m freestyle, an effort that gave Arizona three one-two finishes in the first seven events.
“”(The SMU and Washington meet) was during the hardest training of the year, so it was nice for us to still perform well,”” Townsend said. “”We didn’t rest at all (during the time leading up to the meet). We had a workout on the day of meet, ran the day before and lifted weights, so the meet was really just like another training session for us.””
The UA women followed suit as they too won nine of the 14 events of the day. The 400m medley relay teams started the women’s day off as Anna Turner, Annie Chandler, Brandy Collins and Lindsey aKelly won the event with a time of 3:47.54 and another UA team took third. Carly Beaudreau and Joni Keith kick-started Arizona’s individual event dominance as they placed first and second in the 1,000m freestyle with times of 10:10.33 and 10:10.53 respectively.
Lacey Nymeyer was able to make her first appearance of the year and still managed to win two individual events, including a top finish in the 200m freestyle with a time of 1:50.73 while teammate Leone Vorster finished just behind her with a time of 1:51.84.
“”It was good to get (Nymeyer) back in the pool and racing,”” Busch said, pointing to the limited amount of time to train between now and the Pacific-10 Conference Championships in late February. The women have only three meets before the Feb. 27 opening to the Pac-10 Championships while the men have five meets until that time.
“”We just need to get into best possible shape we can,”” Busch said. “”We have more competitions coming up and that’s really how you begin to sharpen things up. As each meet goes by we look at particulars on things we could be doing better, and that’s what we hope to do (before the Pac-10 Championships).””
Nymeyer showed little rust as she finished second behind Lara Jackson in another UA one-two finish in the 50m freestyle as they posted times of 23.42 and 23.66 respectively. Nymeyer captured her second individual event in the 500m free with a time of 5:00.87.
The end of the meet ended much the way it started, with Arizona cruising to an easy win as the 400m free relay team of Nymeyer, Vorster, Raatz and Jackson won the event with a time of 3:25.91, six seconds faster than Washington’s second-place squad.
“”All things considered, our times were fairly decent,”” junior Taylor Baughman said. “”Since Dec. 26 we’ve had nothing but intense workouts. It’s an important time to break your body down now so that you can rest and get the background training to swim fast at the end of the season.””
