Swimmers drop home meet
Despite competing at home for the first time all season, the swim team was unable to keep up with the sharks from Texas A&M University last Friday. The Owls fell to 7-2 on the year after being devoured by the sixth-ranked Aggies 159-95.
The schedule does not get any easier for Rice today, as the team heads to Dallas, Texas, to take on No. 12 Southern Methodist University at 6 p.m. In Oct. 2006, the last time these two teams met, the then-eighth-ranked Mustangs got the better of the Owls, dominating by a 178-83 margin.
Despite facing two very strong opponents in back-to-back weeks, junior co-captain Diane Gu said the team is not getting down on itself before the meet.
“We’re going into SMU with the same mentality as Texas A&M in that we’re going to stay positive,” Gu said. “We’re not going to go in with a defeatist attitude, but we do also know what kind of team we’re up against.”
The Owls should get a reprieve after the SMU meet in the form of unranked University of North Texas. The Mean Green, whose only win came against Missouri State University Oct. 11, will face Rice in Denton, Texas, tomorrow at 11 a.m.
However, there was no reprieve to be had from the Texas A&M buzzsaw. From the very outset, the Owls struggled to keep up with the Aggies and never quite seemed to find a matchup in their favor. But, according to junior co-captain Natalie Kirchoff, the expectation for last Friday’s meet was not necessarily to win but to stay competitive against the speedy Aggies.
“Our goal is not to swim fast right now, but in the next few weeks, as we’re going into these meets, we want to swim faster and faster and keep chipping away so that by the time we get to conference we’re blowing past [our competition],” she said.
One of Friday’s top performances came from sophomore Pam Zelnick, who snatched the team’s lone first-place finish in the 100-meter breaststroke with a time of 1 minute, 7.08 seconds. On a day when strong finishes were few and far between, Zelnick’s win stood head and shoulders above the rest of the races. She was named Conference USA Swimmer of the Week Tuesday.
Backing up Zelnick’s win, her teammates were able to secure seven second-place finishes in other events.
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