Amid the excitement and the raucous, noisy fans, Northwestern entered the Big Ten championships last Wednesday with optimism and intensity. But after four days of close races at Ohio State’s McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion, the Wildcats left feeling mostly deflated after finishing eighth out of 11 teams.
For the Cats, only sophomore Andrea Hupman qualified for the NCAA championships in a meet won by No. 14 Penn State.
“We thought we’d do a little better,” NU head swimming coach Jimmy Tierney said. “We had three second-place finishes, but you think ‘Just short, just short,’ when you’ve been out-touched.”
The only individual win for the Cats came from freshman diver Chelsea Davis, who was the top-ranked diver entering the meet.
But not even Davis had it going early on. She did not perform up to her standards in the preliminaries of the 1-meter event on Thursday, finishing ninth. Her teammate, junior Leanne Dumais, took seventh.
“I was really nervous for the 1-meter competition because it was my first big meet in a college setting, so my performance was not that great,” Davis said. “I was excited to come back and see how well I could do on 3-meter.”
Davis said she still felt the butterflies during the 3-meter prelims but conquered her anxiety and managed to dive her way into first, making her the last diver to go in the finals.
“The pressure was so great,” Davis said. “It came down to the last dive and the whole audience seemed to be waiting to see what I would do.”
What she ended up doing was a reverse 1 1/2, 2 1/2-twist, which clinched the 3-meter title and forgave her earlier mistakes on the board from the day before. The win allowed Davis to claim first team All-Big Ten honors.
“Chelsea gave us such a thrill,” Tierney said. “I just wished we could have gotten (a first place finish) in the pool.”
Of the 13 swimmers, only Hupman and freshman Hayley Fry had medal-winning performances, giving several swimmers a feeling of disappointment.
“There was no doubt in my mind I was going to make the NCAA’s,” sophomore Katie Braun said. “I just couldn’t finish the last 50 yards and am at a loss for answers.”
Braun’s time of 2:02.65 in the 200-yard fly was barely more than a second slower than her season-best time of 2:01.34 at Tennessee, but she insisted she should have swam faster. Braun said her NCAA ‘B’ standard from Tennessee probably won’t hold up to qualify her for the national championship meet.
Even after lessening the intensity of her workouts, Braun said she still felt fatigued and had a lot of tightness that resulted in her going to a masseuse before and after her swims. But it still wasn’t enough, the tightness continued and she finished 13th in the 200.
Hupman said she was not pleased with her showing, either. She took second place in the 100- and 200-yard freestyles and finished in a seventh-place tie in the 50-yard freestyle.
“I had one best time in my three events and that is not very satisfying,” Hupman said. “No one races for second-place.”
Hupman is the only individual as of now to qualify for the NCAA championships in March 16-18, with Braun and Fry waiting on their ‘B’ standards and diver Chelsea Davis qualifying at the Diving Zones meet March 10-12.
These three said they will continue to train hard to give the Cats the best showing they can get at the NCAA meet.
“We just don’t want to sit around and we’re going back to work, some hard work,” Tierney said. “That’s what we did with Andrea last year and we had success.”
Reach Brian Regan at [email protected].
