The members of the Oberlin College men’s and women’s swimming and diving team spent Winter Term preparing for a successful second half of their season. From Jan. 3rd to 12th, the team was in Clearwater, Florida swimming 10,000 yards per day. In all four meets that took place after the trip, the results reflected the team’s hard work.

Sophomore Thomas Limouze said that he swam “harder than I have ever” in Florida. Limouze said that he feels strong in the water now.

Both the men and women lost all four meets, but impressive individual performances took some of the sting off of the defeats. During the first two meets against John Carroll University and Kenyon College, seven swimmers swam lifetime bests in a variety of events.

In the 100-yard freestyle, first-years Kimberley Meinert and Emily Spence and junior Rachel Kohn-Obut swam times of 59.25, 56.91 and 1:06.68, respectively. Kohn Obut, who swam in the 200 yard freestyle with a 2:21.71 and first-year Kate Boyd, who swam a 2:07.13, had personal best times in the event.

The four other personal bests were senior Adrienne Zoller with a 2:35.24 in the 200-yard breaststroke, first-year Lisa Weigle’s 200-yard individual medley with a 2:24.47, Spence’s 1:03.52 100-yard butterfly and first-year Melissa Ising’s showing of 1:21.81 in the 100-yard breaststroke.

Spence and Zoller’s performances each ranked among the top five all-time performances by an Oberlin College athlete. Zoller’s 200-yard breaststroke gave her third best all time, while Spence’s 100-yard butterfly was good enough for fourth and her 100-yard freestyle placed her at fifth best.

Great individual performances kept rolling in for both the men and the women when they took on Olivet College and Case Western Reserve in the second part of the Jan. schedule.

Zoller rewrote the Oberlin record books again with her 200-yard breaststroke against Olivet. Her time of 2:32.69 moved her up to second all-time in the school’s history.

Spence won in the 50-yard freestyle and Weigle finished first in the 200-yard backstroke in the two other individual events Oberlin won against Olivet. They swam for times of 26.18 and 2:25.76, respectively. Boyd swam a season best with 11:37.93 in the 1000 yard freestyle event, to finish in second place. The event requires swimming the length of the pool 40 times.

The women had four standout performances against Case Western. Boyd won the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 5:37.74, her season best. Senior Lindsay Martin-McCormick also registered her best performance of the year with a 500-yard freestyle in 5:41.89.

Aside from Boyd, the only other swimmer who won an individual event was Zoller, who won the 50-yard freestyle and the 200-yard breaststroke.

On the men’s side, there were two individual winners against Case Western, senior Ben Pierce, 5:07.63 in the 500-yard freestyle and sophomore Yorgos Strangas, who completed the 200-yard breaststroke in 2:35.97.

The men performed very well against Olivet with six individual winners. Oberlin’s previous athlete of the week, Limouze, single-handedly accumulated 27 points in his three individual wins. He placed first in the 200-yard butterfly, the 500-yard freestyle and the 1000-yard freestyle with times of 2:08.52, 5:10.83 and 10:40.52, respectively.

Senior Burt Betchart won the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 2:03.66 and the 200-yard individual medley at 2:02.13. The other winner for the team was Pierce with a 1:49.32 in the 200-yard freestyle.

Both the men’s and women’s teams have finished their last practice and will now focus on the conference meet during the weekend in Canton, Ohio.

The teams will look for their top swimmers to ride their hot streak into the season finale.