IRVINE, Calif. - The Concordia University Irvine swim teams traveled to Santa Clarita and earned a split against one of their PCSC foes, The Masters University over the weekend.
 
The Golden Eagle women overwhelmed the Mustangs, taking 11 of 14 events including podium sweeps in five events in a 179-81 victory.  The men were upended by a fast-improving and motivated TMU squad by a count of 120.5 to 141.5 despite putting up some conference-leading times.  
 
Sophomore Alex Leland dropped the fastest time in the PCSC with a time of 1:07.00 in the 100 breaststroke.  She doubled up with a win in the 200 breast (2:30.48) taking two seconds off her season best.  In the victorious 200 medley relay, she blasted a 29.5 split to help the women take a full second off their season-best mark in that event.  
 
The Golden Eagles displayed tremendous depth on Saturday.  The "A" 200 (Aubrie Carver, Alex, Georgia Caraway, Hailey Garcia) and "B" (Carissa Ward, Jade Hughes, Naomi Nakaya, Randi Peters) 200 medley relays cleared their nearest pursuers by 9 and 4 seconds respectively.  In the next event, a trio of freshmen (Rachel Maki, Payton Doak and Faith Urquhart) swept to a victory in the 1000 freestyle.  Two events later, Aubrie, Georgia and Carissa did the same in the 100 backstroke and then Georgia, Naomi and Ryan Burke did the same in the 100 butterfly.  Finally, to close the meet, the 400 freestyle relay tandems of Alice Stainer, Aranza Martha, Randi and Rachel and Payton, Claire Oppedahl, Ava Pachek and Makayla Novak went 1-2 to end the day on a great note.
 
Aubrie took both backstroke events, Alice swam to an impressive win in the 200 free (1:56.24), Carissa and Hannah Chabin swept the 400 IM, and Hailey won the 50 free.  Of note, Rachel went stroke-for-stroke with Kylie Sears from TMU in the 500 free as both women improved on their season bests with the #2-3 times in the PCSC. At 5:07.63, Rachel is less than 1-second off her PR.  
 
The men posessed superior depth but weren't able to grab critical victories to put them over the top.  The Golden Eagles went 2-3-4 in the 200 free, 100 back and 100 free, 2-3 in the 1000 free and had only two events where our 3rd entrant didn't score (6th place).  There were bright spots for CUI as Jayden Hernandez improved on his conference leading times in the 50 free (20.95) and 100 butterfly (50.19) in earning victories.  The 200 medley relay foursome of Aidan Keane, Trevor Dixon, Jayden (21.1 fly split) and Chris Haygood cruised to the top time in the conference.  
 
"We are swimming through these meets without resting," said CUI head coach Bert Bergen. "Our focus is for a good mid-season meet in a month at the LaVerne Invitational and eventually a hugely successful conference meet in February.  We talked in August about being competitive and seeking to win every meet but that is a tough task give the level of competition we face and with how hard this team is working.  We are very proud of their hard work and commitment.  We take away many lessons from meets like this but don't want to get too high or low with how it went.  We are trying to improve week-to-week and identify good things in and out of the water.  The Lord continues to bless us with a team that is buying in to the vision and leaning on each other for support.  We love this team!"

Next up for the Golden Eagles is a home meet this Saturday, Oct. 28 against Redlands.  It will be an exciting opportunity to go head-to-head once again with an opponent from Southern California and will take place off-campus over at the pool at Portola High School.

CLICK HERE for the updated CUI women's swim and dive schedule

CLICK HERE for the updated CUI men's swim and dive schedule