Men's Swimming shows no mercy, doubles OWU

Saturday, the Yeomen splashed their way to a 145-79 demolition of Ohio Wesleyan University.

The meet was the team's best performance to date. First-year Sean Davis, sophomore Paul Pitcher, and co-captain senior Josh Davis captured individual victories to power the team.

"That wasn't too bad," Coach Dick Michaels said. "We didn't win by too much. Just doubled their score."

"We thought it was going to be a real close meet," senior Robert Pinson said. Last year Oberlin edged OWU by 11 points at their dual-meet and by only one at Conference.

According to Michaels, OWU is a team that traditionally doesn't swim well until the end of the year at the Conference meet, when it counts.

The team trains so hard that the swimmers are too tired to perform well without adequate rest. So far this season, the Yeomen are undergoing their toughest training in years and have, as expected,also swam tired at meets. This strategy, logically, will produce the best results at the Conference Championships in Febraury, after a long taper and lead to several National qualifying times by the team's top swimmers.

Two Yeomen are getting a jump on assuring themselves a trip to Nationals. Junior Matt Soellner and first-year John Limouze, began tapering this past week for the Miami(Oh.) Invitational Dec. 4-6 where each hopes to qualify for Nationals.

Friday, the team used the same strategy of getting rest in hopes of swimming fast in their meet.

"Everyone's pretty tired," Steinhauer said. "[Michaels] rested us more than usual."

The team wasn't satisfied with their three previous performances. "It's good to swim fast for a change," Steinhauer said. "Some of the freshman haven't had a decent meet all season."

The team's strategy was to give away the opening 400-yard Medley Relay and put their strongest swimmers in the individual events.

In addition to Pitcher, Sean Davis and Josh Davis, Soellner and Limouze all came up with victories in swimming events on Saturday as did diver first-year Aaron Hillyer in the diving events.

Sean Davis opened up the individual events with a victory in the 1000-yard freestyle with a time of 10:27.87. Sean followed with a second-place performance in the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:09.15. Soellner swam a season-best 2:04.10 in the race to take first.

In the 200-yard breaststroke, Pitcher swam a season-best 2:22.36 and touched out the field for a victory. Soellner finished third in the event, .23 seconds later.

Before the meet, Pitcher was forced to take an extra practice off to rest at the wish of Michaels. Pitcher was swimming well in practices and poorly in meets according to Michaels.

"It got to be the point that it was depressing him," Michaels said.

The strategy paid off big, as Pitcher dropped 8 seconds off his time in the 200-yard breaststroke from his meet two weeks ago.

For the first time this season, Josh Davis broke the 23 second barrier in the 50-yard freestyle on the way to a second-place finish in the event.

Josh also went onto victory in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 49.57.

In the 500-yard freestyle, Soellner and rival Federico from OWU swam neck and neck the whole race down to the wire, before Federico pulled ahead at the end. Soellner finished second with a time of 5:00.47, .65 seconds after Federico.

Limouze fell to Federico as well, in the 200-yard freestyle. He finished with a time of 1:52.89 to place second. Limouze edged teammate junior Jeremy Steinhauer by .08 seconds. First-year Ivan DeJesus took fourth in the event with a time of 1:53.79.

Limouze breezed to a victory in the 200-yard butterfly and saved his energy for a victory in 200-yard backstroke ten minutes later.

"John Limouze, had a great day, the freshman flyer," Michaels said.

Senior Eric Grasha placed second in the backstroke with a season best 2:05.93. Grasha also led off the meet with a season-best 58.33 split in the backstroke leg of the 400-yard medley relay.

In the freestyle leg, the final leg of the relay, first-year Evan Cobb swam a lifetime best of 52.4.

It's the first time since 1993 that the men's team has had a diver and are not giving up points in the event.

"For the first time since I've been here, having divers helped," Pinson said.

Hillyer won both diving events uncontested.

Diving will be an added insure as the Yeomen go up against their next two conference opponents.

Today, the Yeomen swim at Wittenberg University and Saturday the team swims at the College of Wooster.

Co-captain senior Clayton Woodson and Sean Davis will join the pair of Limouze and Soellner at the Miami Invitational but are not shaving or tapering for the meet.