The Golden Eagle Men's and Women's swim and dive teams competed at the Rodionoff Invitational at Pepperdine this weekend. Given the task of swimming in 5-7 events in the 2-day meet against Division 1, 2 and 3 opponents, the teams responded with some healthy results...and awareness of where we need to focus in the next month.
The men's emerged victorious over Biola, Cal Lutheran and The Master's University in the combined standings while the women's were edged by Biola but victorious over Westmont, CLU and TMU. Participating in the D1 division were USD, Utah Tech, the host Waves and APU attended for one of the two days.
In the D2 division, CUI had a solid weekend with more than 120 top-8 scoring finishes. Highlights included victories in the women's 200 free relay with
Alice Stainer,
Aubrie Carver,
Hannah Edwards and
Alex Leland (24.1s) earning top honors. The men won two relay titles, besting all teams in both events. The 200 free relay of Jayden Hernandez, Legend Storer, Logan Irvine and Jonathan Dose and the 400 free relay of Joey Molettieri, Legend, Thomas McCabe and Jayden each blasted to victory.
The meet started well with
Elena Argabright leading a 1-2-4 finish in the 1000 free (with
Morgan Warren and
Payton Doak) and Mitch Cullen taking the men's 1000 with four Golden Eagles in the top-8.
Aubrie Carver,
Carissa Ward and
Noelle Landon finished 1-3-4 in the 200 back and the dynamic duo of
Alex Leland (1st, 2nd) and
Brinkley Hallgren (2nd, 3rd) held down the 100-200 breaststrokes for CUI. The women had five scorers in the 100 free led by
Alice Stainer who also anchored the 400 free relay in a team best, 53.4 split.
Chloe Dobie continues to show improvement in the 1m and 3m diving. With solid competition in both, she finished 10th overall (3rd in D2 division) in the 3m. On Saturday, she improved on her collegiate best score from last weekend to again finish 3rd of seven on 1m in the D2 meet.
Jayden Hernandez continued his hot streak, winning three overall top finishes in the 50-100 free and 100 butterfly. He, Joey and Tom combined for a 1-2-3 sweep in the 100 free and he and Logan went 1-2 in the 100 butterfly. Joey and Tom led the Golden Eagles to a 2-6 finish in the 200 free with Lanis Webb, Mitch Cullen, and Andrew Canales getting it rolling for CUI.
Breakthrough swims came from Lilly Hartwell in the 100 butterfly and a CUI personal best split on the "A" 400 free relay, Noelle's 1:00.61 in her 100 back and Logan's aforementioned 100 fly in 51.67.
From Coach Bergen:
"Overall, we raced pretty well. We need to get better at closing out races. We gave up leads in the last 10 meters on a few occasions. This can be attributed to fatigue, but good swimmers will put their heads down and get their hands on the wall first. We swam a lot of events on moderate rest and saw some things we liked. We also saw, and importantly, the athletes saw, some areas we need to immediately work on. This is good timing as we'll move into a harder training phase for this month and their focus and effort will be essential. This is always a good trip for us, allowing us to connect with each other; now we'll see how they function under a bit more duress!"
The team will train for two weeks before a small contingent competes at the MPSF Open Water Championships in Long Beach on October 19 and the entire squad head to Claremont to take on D3 national power, Pomona Pitzer.
