By touching the wall first in every swimming event, No. 21 Northwestern dominated host Iowa from start to finish with a 192-99 victory Saturday in its final dual meet of the season.
With the win, NU (10-2, 3-2 Big Ten) recorded its first 10-win season in coach Jimmy Tierney’s 15 years leading the program.
“It’s really a tribute to the team and my staff, the hard work they’ve put in,” Tierney said. “We’ve talked about having the depth this year that we haven’t had in a while and it’s just coming from all sorts of people, from the seniors down to the freshmen.”
Against the Hawkeyes, nine Wildcats picked up individual victories, with Kassia Shishkoff and Jenny Wilson each tallying two.
“The girls did a good job of getting mentally ready to race,” Tierney said. “They weren’t a ranked opponent, so there was certainly the possibility of a letdown, but this team does a really good job of getting themselves ready.”
The Cats jumped out to a 20-point lead in the first two events before Emily Wong, Jenn Kocsis and Ellen Grigg swept the top three spots in the 200-yard freestyle to extend the NU lead to 33.
After Liza Engstrom took the win in the 100-yard backstroke, Wilson and Hayley Fry finished 1-2 in the 100-yard breaststroke.
The Cats’ winning ways continued with Hannah Points winning the 200-yard butterfly and the NU trio of Teisha Lightbourne, Shelby Johnson and Wong sweeping the 50-yard freestyle.
“(Teisha) got out quick in the race,” Tierney said. “When she hits her start real well, she’s better than anybody in the conference that I’ve seen and probably one of the best in the country. And the rest of our girls closed real well in order for us to get that sweep.”
Following wins by Shishkoff in 100-yard freestyle and Genny Szymanski in the 200-yard backstroke, NU took four of the five scoring positions in the 200-yard breaststroke behind Wilson’s second victory of the day.
“That was a spectacular swim and (Wilson) pretty much ran away in that event,” Tierney said.
Kocsis touched first in the 500-yard freestyle to push the NU lead to more than 100 points, and then Stacy Congdon, Meghan Cavanaugh and Alex Kraus completed NU’s fourth 1-2-3 finish of the day.
In the last individual race of the day, the 200-yard individual medley, freshman Jacquie Godbe hit the wall first. However, NU chose not to accept the points for the race because it already had an insurmountable lead.
“She just had some terrific swims,” Tierney said of Godbe. “She’s come a long way from a girl from a small town without a huge swimming background. She’s going to be a player in the coming years.”
The Cats will next race at the Big Ten Championships from Feb. 19-21 in Ann Arbor, Mich., where they will be looking to improve upon last season’s fifth-place finish.
“We’re going to just go out there and race like we’ve been all year and see what we can do at the end,” Tierney said. “We want to just go out and race the best Northwestern can and in every heat we’re in, we’re going to be trying to hopefully get to the wall first.”
