Swimming and Diving

Northwestern faced a tough loss against Wisconsin in Madison on Thursday, losing on the road 186.5-110.5.

“It was rough, I don’t really have an explanation,” coach Jarod Schroeder said. “We have to figure out our road woes, because historically this team has had a tough time performing on the road and we just need to get better with that.”

Sophomore Andy Jovanovic said the team “came together pretty well” after the loss.

“What we’re taking away from this meet is that we’re not really ever going to let something like this happen again,” Jovanovic said.

NU, now 5-2 overall and 0-1 in the conference, had higher expectations for the meet’s outcome.

“We talked about events we had to win,” Schroeder said, “and I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to win those events. When it didn’t happen, it was like the wind out of our sail was taken away.”

Schroeder noted the quality of the facility and a slower pool as perhaps affecting performance. He also noted how the progress of the Cats so far this season could have served as inspiration for a win against then No. 19 Wisconsin.

Junior Jordan Wilimovsky was the only swimmer to place first in an event, winning the 1000 freestyle with a time 17 seconds better than his season record. The Cats came away with notable second place positions in multiple races including: the 100 breaststroke by senior Uula Auren, the 100 fly by freshman Alex Snarski, the 100 free by Jovanovic, the 200 freestyle by sophomore Charlie Cole and the 500 free and 400 individual medley by Wilimovsky. The 200 free relay team of Jovanovic and freshmen Nick Petersen, Almog Olshstein and Gage Kohner also grabbed a second place win.

Despite times still placing among the top in these events, Schroeder did not highlight any of the swimmer’s performances after Thursday’s meet.
“No one stood outside of the ordinary,” Schroeder said. “Usually if someone is going to get recognized I think they need to do something outside of the realm of expectations and we didn’t really have anybody go outside of expectations. We had some that lived up to expectations, but no one that went above and beyond.”

NU will host the TYR Invitational next Friday through Sunday in the Henry Crown Sports Pavilion.

“The general feeling of the team is that we don’t want to go back to this feeling again,” Jovanovic said. “As of now the TYR Invitational is the most important thing on our minds and we’re looking forward to next week.”

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