Good Showing for Swim and Dive at LVI
Monterey Park, Calif. - The men's and women's swim and diving teams headed to Monterey Park, CA this past weekend for the LaVerne Invitational. Most of the top PCSC and SCIAC teams were in attendance and the Golden Eagles put down some excellent results at the midpoint in their seasons.
On short rest with a lot of races on their schedules, CUI recorded 51 personal best times and 33 All-Time CUI Top-10 swims in the three day competition.
Alice Stainer flashed some of her greatness in a dominating win in the console final of the 200 free with her best time in two seasons. Her 1:52.87 is an NCAA D2 "B" qualifying time, her first since her freshman campaign.
Alice and a trio of veterans were instrumental in the Golden Eagle women recording their highest ever team finish at LVI.
Ellie Hardey (77 points),
Alex Leland (73 points), Alice (65 points) and
Aubrie Carver (41.5 points) provided a lot of firepower with 2 individual podium finishes, two team records, two relay podium finishes and another near-NCAA qualifying time.
Ellie was 3rd in the 200 breast, 5th in the 200 IM (3rd fastest in CUI history), and 5th in the 100 breast (5th all-time). Alex ripped a PR in the 50 free (23.78), only 1/100th off the NCAA cut and the 3rd fastest in CUI history. She was 4th in that event and 3rd in the 100 breast in a PR (1:04.34). Alice's 8th place finish in the 500 free (5:07.24p) was her fastest since her freshman year. Aubrie was our top backstroker, getting season bests in both as well as two PRs in her 50 and 100 freestyle events.
The women's relays were eye-popping! Team records fell in the 200 free relay (Alex, Aubrie, Alice and
Rachel Maki) who shaved 2/10 off the one-year-old mark and the 400 medley relay that finally fell at the fast hands and feet of Aubrie, Alex,
Naomi Nakaya, and Alice. The 400 free relay on the final day saw the Golden Eagles do battle with the top teams in the conference, CSEB and APU. Their bronze podium finishing time of 3:30.14 is only 16/100ths off of the team mark set last year. The women's 200 medley relays in particular showed off the amazing depth that CUI has this year. The A quartet (Aubrie, Alex, Naomi, Rachel) were 4th, the B group (
Noelle Landon, Ellie,
Aranza Martha, Alice) finished 5th only 6/10th behind and the C relay of
Carissa Ward,
Brinkley Hallgren,
Lilly Hartwell, and
Hannah Edwards were 15th overall only two seconds back. That relay was so quick, it finished in front of the B relays from Westmont, Biola, FPU, and the A AND B from TMU!
A-finals (top-8) finishes for the women included:
Naomi Nakaya 200 fly (2nd), 3rd all-time; 100 fly (6th), 5th all-time, both PRs
Elena Argabright 200 back (8th), 8th all time, 1650 free (7th), 9th all-time, PRs
Brinkley Hallgren 100 breast (7th), 5th all-time, PR
Other all-time top-10 times were recorded by
Rachel Maki who jumped to 6th in the 50 free (23.97) and 9th in the 100 free (53.03),
Alex Leland now 5th in the 200 breast and Brinkley, right behind in 8th in the same event.
Hunter May led the way for the men with a PR in the 200 IM and a nearly another in the 400 IM events. His 1:52.82 is his fastest in over 5 years and is now 9th all-time for the Golden Eagles. His hard-fought 4:04.15 is now the 5th all-time.
Jack Harris was at his early season best for the 100 and 200 breaststrokes. He swam to a 3rd place finish in the former with a 56.66 and a 2:06.30 in the latter. The 100 is a 1/2-second drop and the 200 is just off his best time from 2022. He recorded a PR in the 200 IM and dropped a super quick, 21.0 split on a relay.
Jackson Rosol had a really good meet with a 5th place season best in the 500 IM and a huge 1:53.22 in his 200 back. He went stroke for stroke with Hunter in the 200 IM (again) emerging with a 2/100th of a second edge at 1:52.80. The final top-8 finishes belonged to
Jayden Hernandez, who was 5th in the 50 free and 6th in the 100 butterfly.
The men's relays came up big as usual. The opening 400 medley relay (
Logan Irvine, Jack, Jayden,
Joey Molettieri) swam to a 4th place finish (8th all-time) and one night later, the same quartet blasted a 1:31.17 in the 200 medley, earning the 3rd fastest time in school history.
The 800 free relay of
Tom McCabe,
Hunter May and
Mitchell Cullen and Joey finished 3rd overall, the 200 free relay (
Legend Storer,
Jonathan Dose, Logan, and Jayden) was 4th and the closing 400 free relay of Joey, Tom,
Jacob VanRensburg and Jayden) also finished 4th, the 8th fastest time in CUI history.
Both teams finished in 3rd place overall. The women defeated 13 teams including Biola, UCSC, FPU and TMU from the PCSC with only CSEB and APU in front of them. The men finished behind FPU and UCSC and came out of a dogfight on top of TMU and Claremont-Mudd Scripps. 13 teams competed on the men's side.
From Coach Bergen
We use this meet to gauge what we've been doing right and what we need to work on going forward. It falls directly in the middle of our 25-week season and we only do a short rest, put on tech suits and tell them to compete. We got 51 PRs, 33 All-Time Top-10 finishes and more than 200 season best times! This was a fun experience; our very young women's team really impressed us and the men just grinded as usual with good results. We beat some top PCSC competition which is encouraging but we know a lot of work lies ahead. Their enthusiasm and growing confidence are genuine blessings for us to see and I am happy of our progress in the water and proud of it out of the water. My tremendous coaches are doing amazing work with these athletes.
