The men's swim team had a very unique start to the new year. They traveled without the women's squad to Thousand Oaks to compete in the Chris Knorr Invitational at Cal Lutheran on Tuesday, January 2nd. Coming off of the Christmas break, a rugged test set practice on the 31st and a day off the day before, the Golden Eagles had plenty of opportunity to struggle and they did nothing of the sort.  

CUI put up 608 points to outdistance the host Regals (585) and PCSC foes, The Master's University (538) and Biola (525).   

Times weren't especially sharp but the Golden Eagles won a lot of the "get the hand on the wall first" ones and that's all that is needed sometimes.

Jayden Hernandez posted the only two wins for CUI on the day, taking the 50 free and 100 butterfly in relatively easy fashion.  He was also part of the 2nd place 200 medley relay (with Aidan Keane, Trevor Dixon and Chris Haygood) and the 3rd place 400 free relay (with Chris, Joey Molettieri and Owen Neitzel).  

Molettieri grabbed two bronze medals in the 200 and 500 freestyles, Keane was third in the 100 back, and Dixon was 3rd in the 100 breaststroke for CUI.  

Additional strong efforts were turned in by Landon McIntire (100-200 free), Haygood (50-100 free), Keane (100-200 back, 200 IM), and Baker (100-200 back).

A very excited head coach, Bert Bergen, shared his thoughts on the day. "After a really challenging New Years Eve workout, we were uncertain how the team would respond in this one. We've never done a meet during winter training, so to see the guys battle in individual races was really rewarding. There is a lot of rust on all teams, we were missing five guys and we set moderate expectations. They showed some fire and we will build on this.  We need to get healthy, get to full strength and put in some solid work this month. Six weeks until conference champs and we'll be ready!"