If sheer heroics had been the deciding factor in the meet against Wisconsin, Northwestern might have slipped away with a win.
Trailing the Badgers for more than half the meet, the Wildcats fought their way back to a final relay showdown – first, a 400-yard IM relay and then a 400-yard freestyle relay. In the opening relay, NU juniors Alex Tyler and Peter Park outpaced Wisconsin by 1.46 seconds and tied the meet at 140. But the team’s comeback ended there.
“Going into that last relay, we really showed that we can hold strong with the best teams in the Big Ten,” said Park, who is also the team’s co-captain. “But we came up short in the end, because we needed to swim that way the whole meet.”
The Cats lost the final relay and their nine-point loss to Wisconsin was the closest defeat the team has suffered this season.
“We were pretty evenly matched against Wisconsin,” coach Jarod Schroeder said. “Where we lost was in our second and third tier of guys.”
Statistically the two teams matched up, both notching eight event wins on the night. But the Cats lost the meet on depth. Wisconsin consistently placed in the top five, even when ceding first place to NU. In the 50-yard freestyle, NU was outscored 16-3, managing to place only one swimmer out of three, junior Brian Kerr, on the leaderboard.
For the Cats, lack of depth can be chalked up to youth. On an already small roster of 19 swimmers, eight are freshmen and three are seniors.
“It’s always hard to come in at the bottom of the totem pole,” said freshman Charlie Rimkus, one of NU’s most highly-touted recruits. “But I feel like we’re all getting more comfortable every meet.”
NU looked more experienced Saturday as the team glided to its first win against Illinois-Chicago, losing only two events in the contest and closing out the afternoon 212-86.
“We took a lot of excitement and momentum from last night and used it today, ” said Park, who won three events against UIC.
Several new additions turned in standout performances. Freshman Varun Shivakumar repeated his 100-yard backstroke win from Friday night against Illinois-Chicago. Rimkus, who won the 100-yard freestyle against Wisconsin, finished second to Park in the same event Saturday.
“Today was a good showing for us,” Rimkus said. “We are just going to work on refining things and looking sharper for next week.”
