For the second time in a week, the Golden Eagle women's swim team took on some elite competition and similar to last week's outing against the PCSC top-ranked CSEB team, CUI rose up and had a solid showing, this time against PCSC #2 APU at the OC Invite held Saturday at Woollett Aquatic center. After the last swimmers hit the pads, CUI emerged in a TIE with the Cougars for the meet title at 1,199 points! The Master's University, Soka and Westcliff rounded out the scoring.

The Golden Eagles won four of the 16 events on the day with the 200 medley relay kicking things off the same way they did last week with a solid win in 1:48.82. This is an unrested best time and is a mere 1/2 second off their rested 1:48.3 from November.  Aubrie Carver, Alex Leland, Georgia Caraway and Hailey Garcia were dominant thanks in part to Alex's 29.3 breaststroke split (2 seconds faster than anyone else) and Georgia's 26.3 fly split (4/10th faster than anyone).

Leland won the 100 breaststroke, Caraway the 100 butterfly and Carver the 200 backstroke to lead the squad. Showing tremendous depth in the backstroke and breaststroke events, Carver, Caraway, and Carissa Ward went 2-3-4 in the 100 back and 1-2-3 in the 200 back (with Carissa 2nd and Georgia 3rd) while Alex, Jade Hughes, and Ellie Hardey were 1-3-4 in the 100 breast and 2-3-4 in the 200 breast.

Alice Stainer and Rachel Maki continue to chip away at their unrested 200 freestyle times posting 1:56.02 and 1:57.07 respective finishes, good for 2nd and 4th in that event. Each swam important legs on the 400 free relay (with Leland and Carver) to help secure a bronze in that event and close out the meet with a huge win.

For the men, they dropped a close one to TMU (1409.5-1369.5) and knocked off Soka and Westcliff. After taking 10 of 16 events and getting huge contributions from three mid-year roster additions, the squad is feeling good about their chances at the conference championships next month.

Splitting the 200 medley relay squads into "equal" A and B teams created a great competitive battle: the A relay started out with the lead through 100 yards with Thatcher Grooms and Jack Harris powering out front, but the B squad blazed home to take the win as Jayden Hernandez and Jonathan Dose rallied their foursome (with Aidan Keane and Trevor Dixon).  Grooms' 50 back split was the fastest in the field by 6/10th and Hernandez's 21.8 butterfly split was 1.7 seconds clear of anyone on that leg and even faster than the freesyle anchors on 5 of the 8 relays!

The men rolled to 1-2 sweeps in five events. Jon Sutherlin and Mitchell Cullen (1000 free), Harris and Dixon (100 breast), Hernandez and Chris Haygood (100 free), Dixon and Hunter May (200 breast), Grooms and Lanis Webb (200 back) were the dominant duos.  The men's depth was a factor as well as Payton Bouwhuis (4th in the 1000 free), Aidan Keane (4th) and Nash Baker (4th) in the 200 back, and Jerald Bermudez (4th, 100 breast, 5th, 200 breast) all put a lot of points in the CUI column.  Bermudez's 200 breast was a career best at CUI as he easily had the best meet of his 2-year CUI career on Saturday. Chris Haygood, in his final season, is finally overcoming injuries and regaining his dominant form. He blasted to a win in the 50 free with his best unrested time of the year. Grooms swept the backstroke events in his return to CUI after 18 months and Hernandez won the 100 fly for the third straight meet.  

The men ended the day with a forceful showing in the 400 free relay going 1-3 and putting up some great splits: Hernandez (47.1), Haygood (47.3), Jacob VanRensburg (48.2), Joey Molettieri (48.5) and Jonathon Dose (48.5) were rolling today!

"Swimming at our "home" pool is always a lot of fun and getting all the support from family and friends (especially the women's soccer and volleyball teams) was very cool!" shared head coach Bert Bergen. "We are still pretty broken down from our tough winter training session and still missing some valuable swimmers with injuries and illness, but a win is a win and we couldn't be happier with their resiliance and their ability to fight through the pain to compete. Days like this make all of it worth it.  We still have some work and some racing to do, but rest is coming! " 

The team will put in a another solid week of training and then head to Fresno for a tough match-up with the PCSC men's #1 ranked Sunbirds. That will be an 11:30am start at a site TBD.  In two weeks, the team will host its Alumni Weekend with a lot of events planned so be checking our social media this week for updates, former CUI stars!

For the entire CUI Swim and Dive schedule, CLICK HERE