Swimming and Diving

Northwestern lost both competitions in the season’s final dual meet by large margins, but the scoreboard only told part of the story.

The Wildcats lost to No. 18 Purdue, 244-109, and to No. 24 Minnesota by an almost identical score of 245-108. While NU won only three of 19 events at the two day meet, the swimmers continued to make progress in their individual races.

“We were faster in a lot of races than we were last weekend (against Iowa), and we had quite a few people go season best times,” coach Abby Steketee said. “There are definitely some things we need to polish up (before Big Tens).”

Junior captain Lacey Locke provided a tremendous contribution to her team, winning both the 100- and 200-yard backstrokes. In the 200, Locke was the only swimmer to finish the event under two minutes, completing it in 1:59.23 and winning by more than two seconds.  

Her time was nearly identical to what she did two weeks ago at Notre Dame, though it is still far off her season best of 1:57.43 from the TYR Invitational last November.

In the 100-yard backstroke, Locke had a closer competition, finishing in 55.18 seconds to beat Minnesota’s Zoe Avestruz by less than a quarter of a second.

“(The 100) was close, and I just did what Abby (Steketee) and I had planned to do,” Locke said. “I killed my last wall and it ended up working.”

The Cats’ only other win came in the 50-yard freestyle, as sophomore Mary Warren won convincingly in 23.13 seconds. Although that is relatively slower compared to recent weeks –– she swam a 22.94 against Iowa the previous weekend –– she still won by a large margin for the short event.  

Minnesota’s Abigail Raatz finished 36 hundredths of a second behind Warren, and an additional three swimmers finished the race less than a second behind Warren’s winning time.

“I’m at a good place right now, especially compared to last year,” Warren said. “It’s not easy to go up against Minnesota, one of the higher ranked teams in the Big Ten, and Purdue, also a really great competitor, for two days straight.”

For the first time this season, NU’s star freshman diver Olivia Rosendahl failed to win a diving event. Rosendahl did not compete from the 3-meter board this weekend, which was won by Minnesota’s Yu Zhou, the defending NCAA and Big Ten champion in the event. From the 1-meter board, Rosendahl took third, behind Zhou and her teammate Lexi Tenenbaum.

Before the meet, Locke said the Cats watched a motivational video about bull riding that aptly described the meet against two ranked opponents. Even though rodeo riders know the bull will eventually throw them, they still try to hang on as long as possible.

“We watched this video (about) staying on the bull as long as you can and not giving up,” Locke said. “I feel like as a team we did that.”

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