FEDERAL WAY, Wash. – Despite losing out on the team
titles, the Puget Sound Loggers concluded a strong performance at
the 2010 Northwest Conference Swimming Championships on Sunday at
the Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way,
Wash.
After Whitworth extended their lead following the 1650yd freestyle
races, the Loggers closed the gap in the next races. In the
women’s 200yd backstroke, sophomore Cait Farry (Colorado
Springs, Colo./William J. Parker) took second with a time of
2:12.35 to pick up 17 points.
Senior Jackson Kowalski (Keizer, Ore./McNary) hit the B-Cut mark
in the men’s 200yd backstroke, winning by nearly seven
seconds with a time of 1:52.41.
The closest race of the meet came in the women’s 100yd
freestyle final as Katie Barton (Boise, Idaho) finished just one
one-hundredth of a second behind Jennifer Benson of Whitworth,
posting a silver-medal time of 53.56. The Logger women closed the
gap even further in the women’s 200yd breaststroke as Tracy
Wormwood (Elk River, Minn.) completed the breaststroke sweep,
winning with a B-Cut qualifying time of 2:23.12 to get the Loggers
within 13 points of Whitworth, 700-687.
Despite a third-place finish by junior Kelsey Elizondo (Salt Lake
City, Utah/Judge Memorial) in the women’s 200yd butterfly,
the Pirates used three swimmers in the championship final to extend
their lead back to 34 points with just one event left to
compete.
In the final individual event of the three-day, meet, freshmen
Aleksander Jeremic (Skopje, Macedonia) and Zachary Walker
(Portland, Ore./Grant) battled in the men’s 200yd butterfly
with Jeremic edging out Walker by just one one-hundredth of a
second with a winning time of 1:55.23.
In the final events of the evening, the Logger women swam to a
second-place finish in the 400yd freestyle relay with a time of
3:37.79. Whitworth won the final race to clinch the women’s
title with 793 points. The Loggers finished in second with 753
points. Lewis & Clark was a distant third with 356 points,
followed by Whitman (255), Linfield (261), Pacific (241),
Willamette (223) and Pacific Lutheran (191).
The Loggers men also collected a second-place finish in the team
standings but it took an outstanding effort as they took second in
the 400yd freestyle relay to finish just four points ahead of third
place Whitman. Whitworth won the team title with 724.5 points,
followed by Puget Sound (611), Whitman (607), Linfield (365), Lewis
& Clark (276), Pacific (248), Pacific Lutheran (245.5) and
Willamette (1).
The Loggers will now play the waiting game to see if any of their
provisional qualifying times will be strong enough to earn them an
invitation to the 2010 NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving
Championships, which will be held on Mar. 17-20 at the University
Aquatic Center in Minneapolis, Minn.