This post was written by Hatchet reporter Scott Nover.
The men’s and women’s swimming teams remained winless this weekend, as Towson completely dominated the Colonials in their own pool.
After suffering defeats to Bucknell, UMBC and Drexel, GW found the fourth opponent the most relentless of all. Towson routed the Colonial women 184.5–76.5 and the men 199-63.
The Tigers looked strong from the beginning, toppling the usually competitive women’s team in some of the Colonial’s strongest events. Head coach Dan Rhinehart had seen the Towson women in competition for years now, and was not at all surprised by their high-level of competition.
“Their women’s program has been strong to the point where they’ve got kids at NCAAs almost on a regular basis,” Rhinehart commented. “They’re just that much stronger.”
Senior Caroline Myers, a leader on the team in individual freestyle events, was bested on three different occasions, finishing with three second-place efforts. Myers was also a part of the second-place 400-yard freestyle relay team (3:38.05), alongside seniors Sloane Saunders, Sydney Saunders and Melissa Fernandez.
The lone win of the day for the Colonials came from junior Janica Lee, whose 1:07.79 finish in the 100-yard breaststroke bested Towson’s Hannah Snyder by almost two seconds. In Janica’s other event – the 200-yard breaststroke – the junior swimmer had a strong 2:25.31 swim, coming in second place.
“In general, they just went after every race,” Lee said. “They had some people in the outside lanes that were really swimming well as opposed to in the middle of the pool, so they caught us off- guard.”
On the men’s side, junior transfer Goran Koprivnjak – still in his first season with GW – felt the same as Myers and Lee, coming up just short in the majority of his matches. In the 200-yard Butterfly, Koprivnjak was edged off 1:52.37–1:52.45 by Towson’s Matt Lowe, and in the 100-yard freestyle, he also lost by less than a second to finish runner-up. His third second place finish of the day came in the 100-yard Butterfly.
Freshman Bogdan Balteanu came to the wall in the 200-yard Individual Medley in a split-second finish, but just barely fell to Towson’s Jon Burr, 1:57.87–1:57.96.
Looking back on the meet, Rhinehart recognized the large amount of narrow second-place finishes the team had, rather than the large margin of loss.
“We had a lot of season’s best times. We didn’t get a lot of first places, but in our sport, time is still your bottom line.” Rhinehart said, emphasizing the importance of continuing to improve your time as the season progresses.
But the Colonials brought heavy hearts into the race. Dan Black, a GW strength and conditioning coach, has been recuperating in the hospital since a serious motorcycle accident put him in the hospital Oct. 31. The swimming program hosted a bake sale for the injured coach, raising hundreds of dollars in the process. Black is said to be improving since being admitted to the hospital.
“A big part of today was ‘Doing it for Dan,’” Lee said. “He is our weight trainer that got in a motorcycle accident last week, so we sat down as a team and were like ‘hey this is gonna be tough, but we’re doing it for Dan. Just fight for every race like he’s fighting in the hospital right now.’”
The Colonials have a short break from competition until the Patriot Invitational, which starts on Nov. 21. The importance of the invitational lies in the large number of competitors and the event’s set-up, easily likened to that of the Atlantic 10 Championships because of its length and inclusion of both preliminary and final races.
“We’ve got Patriot Invitational in two weeks. From now to then, they’ve got 10 days of a lot of hard training. We’ll rest them for a couple of days, get ready to go to Patriot and swim fast,” said an eager Rhinehart.
