This past weekend, the PEIF pool saw two top GLIAC programs go head-to-head as the No. 8 men’s and No. 10 women’s NMU swim and dive teams hosted the No. 11 men’s and No. 13 women’s Wayne State teams.
NMU women’s team came out on top of the meet both nights, earning a total of 239 points over Wayne State’s 69, while the men in the pool scored 137, falling to Wayne State who scored 163 points in the pool on Saturday.
“It was a good weekend versus Wayne State. The men and women won on Friday, and then the women won on Saturday and the men were close on Saturday, which was good because Wayne State is usually a pretty solid team,” Head Coach Heidi Voight said.
In the pool for the women, earning points were junior diver Kalina Ceglinski, whose performance in the pool earned her GLIAC diver of the week for the second time this season.
Following Ceglinski, junior swimmer Anika Wright earned herself GLIAC swimmer of the week coming off a first-place finish in the 1000-yard freestyle with a race time of 10:35, with the second-place swimmer coming in over six seconds later.
“Kalina has just been so solid all year. She won all four boards in diving and, not by a little, so she’s substantially, you know, handles those really well. She’s just diving so consistently…Anika Wright was pretty dominant all weekend. and she won all her events and just swam really well and she’s a distance swimmer so she had a lot of events to swim and she just stepped up and was competitive and really great to watch when one swimmer’s having a dominant weekend like that,” Voight said.
Also from Wright was the 500-yard freestyle. Wright placed first again with an end time of 5:08. Wright ended the meet with another first-place finish time in the 400-yard IM, where Wright came in with a time of 4:34.
Other first-place finishes for the Wildcats were in both the men’s and women’s 400-yard freestyle relay teams. The men finished with a time of 3:06 and were made up of Will LaCount, Daniel Khmara, Youssef Nahali, and Gabriel Fulconi. The women’s team was made up of Laura Stockinger, Ellie Kilgard, Joanne Arbic, and Abby Keen. The relay raced for a time of 3:37.
The men’s 400-yard IM race saw Wildcat Matto Ballardin with a final time of 4:04. The women’s 100-yard butterfly saw three Wildcats take the top three spots. First place was Sophia Moore, followed by Phini Scheider for silver with a time of 59:83. Finally, bronze in the race went to Pauline Izydorek. Both in the 200-yard backstroke, men and women wildcats took first. The women’s race was won by Evangeline Pierce with a winning time of 2:09. After the women’s race, the men took to the pool, where Wildcat success was found once again, with Andrew Tease earning the win with a time of 2:09 as well. Emma Casas earned first place in the 100-yard backstroke, clocking in at 59.36.
The 200-yard women’s breaststroke race went to Wildcatt Manuela Araujo with a time of 2:26. While the Men’s 100-yard freestyle went to Daniel Khumara with a time of 46:21. Annika Geyer came in first in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:10. Evie DeCarlo earned a first-place finish in the women’s 100-yard freestyle, finishing in 54.64. Vicky Burda came in first in the women’s 50-yard freestyle with a final time of 25.04.
“I’ve always thought…the most important race is that first one after you win the medley relay. Then everybody kind of breathes a sigh of relief, like we’re going to be okay and we’re swimming well and it’s going to be fine. It kind of lifts that pressure off,” Voight said.
The Wildcats will rest a couple of weeks before setting out to compete in the Calvin College Invite, where the team will compete against several different teams. The team will head down to Calvin on Dec. 4. and compete for three days of competition. After that, the team heads to Florida just before the holidays to race in the Openwater Nationals.
