the Rice Thresher

Issue date: 11/21/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Ariel Shnitzer Senior Diane Gu swims against New Mexico State on Nov. 6. Last Weekend the owls won three of four dual meets held at the University of Houston's Recreation Center. They are swimming at the Cornhusker Invitational this weekend.

Hopefully, the expression holds true: the third time is the charm. The swim team has faced University of Houston twice, but the Owls have yet to claim bragging rights over their cross-town rivals. Their final chance before the Conference USA meet will be in January, when they meet UH in Baton Rouge, La., for the Louisiana Triple Dual Meet.

Although the final outcome was the same as it was two weeks ago at the UH Invitational, the Owls were able to significantly narrow the Cougars' margin of victory from 52 points to 27 points this weekend. Rice easily overcame its other competitors, beating Florida International University 239-75, University of the Incarnate Word 260-87 and Vanderbilt 256-80.

However, Rice has no diving team, which is the swimming equivalent of competing in a track and field meet with no field competitors. This lack of personnel means that the Owls begin every meet with a 32-point deficit, since they forfeit all of those diving points to the other team. Had the Owls sported a competitive diving team, they would have had a good chance of finishing 4-0 at the meet.

Assistant coach Jada Hallmark (Sid '01) said the team wanted to make up for last week's loss to UH.

"We had something to prove going into it [the meet] knowing that last week we hadn't really swum our best," she said. "The girls wanted to have a little revenge and come back, and unfortunately we weren't quite as strong as we needed to be to overcome that 32-point diving deficit."

The disappointing loss to UH aside, Rice secured four individual first-place finishes and five second-place finishes, including an impressive showing in the freestyle events. In the 1,650-yard freestyle, senior Caitlin Warner took second place with a time of 17:21.74. In the 500- yard freestyle, the second-longest swim of the night, Warner reappeared towards the top of the pack, again grabbing second place. Coming in close behind her were freshmen Nicole Delaloye and Alex O'Brien in third and fourth, respectively. Fellow freshman Shelby Bottoms led the 200-yard freestyle for the Owls, touching in at 1:52.33 and capturing second place. Junior Pam Zelnick grabbed first place in the 50-yard freestyle, posting a season-best time of 24.05 in the evening sprint event. Her stellar performance earned her C-USA swimmer of the week honors. Senior teammates Skylar Craig and Diane Gu came in third and fourth place, respectively.

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools