Fresh off winning Northwestern’s Female Athlete of the Week award, sophomore swimmer Brielle Bovee tried to set the pace for the Wildcats on Friday when they suited up against Wisconsin.
Even though she did her part by winning the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke, NU fell short of beating the Badgers — falling 172-125.
While Bovee hasn’t lost in the 100- or 200-meter breaststroke this year, the Cats have dropped their last three dual meets after starting the season 3-0. All three losses have been to Big Ten teams.
But the injury-riddled Cats remain confident about the rest of the season.
“We got two people back (from injury) Friday night,” senior Carmen Cosgrove said. “As we pick up more people, we’ll definitely start to do better.”
Cosgrove also won both of her events — finishing the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:04.45, and the 100 in 56.94.
Although the Cats lost by almost 50 points, the final score wasn’t a good representation of the team’s effort.
“As a team we had a lot of good swims,” Bovee said. “And even though we didn’t win overall, we’re headed in the right direction.”
NU opened the season with seemingly easy matches against Toledo and Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The Cats finished first in 9 of 13 events and won the two matches by a combined 106 points.
Two days later, NU destroyed the other four teams competing in the NU Relays. The Cats scored 220 points, winning each of the 11 events.
Even though the Cats were undefeated, they remained realistic.
“We didn’t expect (the Big Ten matches) to be as easy as our first few,” Cosgrove said. “We’re not really worried about losing. We just wanna do the best that we can and get some good swims out of people.”
The Cats saw their first Big Ten action when they traveled to West Lafayette, Ind., to swim against Pittsburgh and Purdue. NU beat Pittsburgh, but found out just how rough its conference season would be when it faced Purdue — losing 166-134.
Following a loss to Indiana, NU was faced with Friday’s opponent, Wisconsin, one of the better teams in the conference. Even though the Badgers got the best of NU, the Cats still found a few bright spots.
Sophomore diver Ashley Carter (Bovee’s roommate) put up season-best scores, winning both the 1- and 3-meter diving events.
For the second week in a row, sophomore Paige Nath continued to fall just short of winning her events.
Against Indiana, her time of 1:53.37 in the 200-meter freestyle was fast enough to earn her second place.
When she faced Wisconsin, she finished the 200-meter individual medley with a time of 2:06.88 — a little more than one second out of first place, but only .02 seconds shy of second.
Next weekend NU will host a three-day invitational. The Cats will face three other teams and look to benefit from the return of Michaela Restivo, Janell Brodrick and Shuyan Phua.
And there’s more good news: They also won’t face anyone from the Big Ten.
