Maverick Swim and Dive took home their fifth Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference (RMAC) team title in a row.
From Feb. 7-11, the team competed in the RMAC Championship, hosted at Colorado Mesa University (CMU) in the El Pomar Natatorium. The women’s team is now ranked second and the men’s team is ranked fourth in the nation for Division II.
On the first day of competition, the women’s “A” relay quartet set a record of 7:21.77 and beat out the Colorado School of Mines (CSM), who finished with a time of 7:34.04. Directly after, the “B” quartet won their heat by 23 seconds with a time of 7:26.33.
The men’s quartet “A” team took second with 6:33.61, while the “B” team easily won with a time of 6:40.14. Following that, three men’s competitors set new or improved NCAA provisional qualifying times and two women set the same in the 200 yard breaststroke.
Other notable scores for the first day included sophomore Ellie Wilke earning second-fastest time in CMU history for the 200 yard breaststroke at 2:17.44, and freshman Maddi Moran jumping to the third spot with 2:19.38.
On Wednesday Feb. 8th, the women’s team won all four events. In the 1,000 yard freestyle race, three CMU swimmers took the first, third and fourth spots. Freshman Olivia Hansson came first with this year’s NCAA Division II record of 10:06.21, redshirt senior Amelia Kinnard finished third with 10:25.09 and freshman Haven Hinkle came fourth with a time of 10:35.06.
Redshirt senior Logan Anderson and junior Izzy Powers tied for fourth place and both reached a personal best of 23.64 for the 50 yard freestyle. Following that, redshirt senior Lily Borgenheimer scored an individual win and broke CMU’s record with 16 RMAC titles in her time here, though she went on to win several more in the following days.
The men started strong with redshirt sophomore Gavin Anderson winning his section, the 1,000 yard freestyle, with a time of 9:25.05, which placed him at second overall. His teammates came in third and fourth, graduate student Kyle Benjamin came in at 9:30.39, and sophomore Jacob Troescher followed with 9:30.73. Redshirt sophomore Ben Sampson won his 12th RMAC title and is the DII national leader in the 200 yard Individual Medley (IM) with a time of 1:48.45.
In diving, redshirt junior Isaiah Cheeks won an individual RMAC title in the 3m event. Cheeks qualified for the NCAA Division II National Championships, and will be defending his champion title in Indianapolis.
The women ended the third day of the meet with more titles, and had won all 11 events so far. Freshman Kiara Borchardt won the 100 yard butterfly with a time of 55.27, which puts her in second nationally. Redshirt sophomore Katerina Matoskova took an RMAC title after winning the 200 freestyle in 1:50.46.
Sophomore diver Kyra Apodaca took gold, scoring 469.75 in the 1m diving event, while freshman Kenya Meyer followed in second, with a total of 458.80 points. From there, the women’s events finished with a win in the relay, coming in at 3:42.92.
On the men’s side, sophomore Dejan Urbanek defended his RMAC title in the 100 butterfly with a time of 48.01 seconds. Sampson took an RMAC title and the national leader spot in the 400 IM, touching at 3:54.98. The 400 relay medley “A” team took second in their event at 3:13.44, which is a season–best for the group. The “B” team took first in their heat with 3:17.94.
There was more success on the fourth day, as both teams held the lead, the women finished the day out with 967 points and the men finished with 890.
Hansson competed in the 500 freestyle and broke CMU’s school record with a time of 4:53.50. Matoskova took first in the 100 backstroke, finishing in just 55.14 seconds. Borgenheimer mirrored her previous successes earning gold in the 100 breaststroke at 1:02.18. Urbanek won the 200 butterfly with a time of 1:47.08 and Cheeks continued to dominate 3m diving by scoring 551.85.
On Saturday, the men’s and women’s teams finished with exceptional numbers. The women won 19 of 21 events throughout the five day meet, finishing with a score of 1,325, which was 608 points above the second place CSM. The Maverick men came out on top with 1,183 points and the runner up was Oklahoma Christian University with 848.
Borgenheimer was named RMAC Women’s Swimmer of the Meet for the second time in a row, after winning all four individual and all three group titles throughout the meet. Borgenheimer has now won 19 RMAC titles in her career at CMU.
Apodaca and Meyer were given the title of RMAC Co-Women’s Divers of the Meet. Further, Cheeks was recognized as RMAC Men’s Diver of the Meet for the second time in a row.
Sampson finished out the meet by setting a new RMAC Championship record in the 200 backstroke at 1:44.49. He has earned 15 RMAC titles in his three years at CMU and entered this meet as a national leader in five different events.
As the season comes to an end, many of the Mavericks are headed to the National Championships from March 7-11 in Indianapolis. The rest of the team will continue to train for next season.
