Colorado Mesa University’s (CMU) swim teams are a force to be reckoned with in the RMAC and have been for almost a decade. The men captured their first conference title in 2014, following up with conference championships in 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. The women claimed their first conference title in 2019, winning in 2020, 2021 and 2022 as well.
This year, the team looks just as dominant as it has in recent years. CMU’s second-ranked women’s swim team and third-ranked men’s team placed first in 19 of 22 combined events on Oct. 21 against Colorado School of Mines (Mines). This earned a key win for the team while both the men’s and women’s programs extended long RMAC win streaks in the process. The womens’ team has now won 34 straight and the men 13 straight.
The Mavericks ended the day with a combined score of 234-168, with the women accounting for 121 points in the victory and the men accounting for 113. Both teams had built up a hefty enough lead to swim the final two events as exhibition races, allowing Mines to close the scoreboard gap, but in reality the meet was not close.
This was a unique meet for CMU, as this was the only dual meet of the season where the swimmers got to pick the events that they swam rather than the coaches. As such, many swimmers swam events they do not normally swim, and those swims were all labeled as exhibition swims and did not count for the final score.
“Our swimmers definitely stepped up and raced hard in [events] they don’t typically get to do. It was a solid day,” said Head Coach Mickey Wender, now in his fifth year as the Mavericks’ head coach.
Wender, a New York native who has over 400 wins under his belt during his 30-plus year career as a Division I swim coach at various schools, was also the head coach for American Samoa at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He currently has his sights set on a national championship at CMU, where he has led both the men’s and women’s teams to RMAC titles every year since his hire before the 2019-2020 season.
His team saw three swimmers break pool records for their traditional events at this meet.
Redshirt junior Ben Sampson, who was the NCAA Division II Men’s Swimmer of the Year for the 2022-23 season and currently holds the all-time Division II record for the 200-meter backstroke, set the men’s 100-meter backstroke record. He did so while leading off the men’s 400-meter medley relay, swimming it in a blazing 48.93 seconds.
Sophomore Agata Naskret broke the women’s 100-meter backstroke record while leading off the women’s 400-meter medley relay, then amazingly broke it again during her swim of the individual event. She finished that race with a time of 56.46 seconds, snagging the pool record from former Maverick swimmer Mary Saiz.
In between Naskret’s two record-breaking swims, redshirt senior Benedict Nagy finished multiple seconds ahead of anyone else in the 200-meter Individual Medley with an official time of 2:08.70. The official second-place finisher in that race was CMU’s Sophia Bains with a time of 2:11.96, though Bains finished the event with the fourth-fastest finishing time. The second- and third- fastest times belonged to sophomore Ada Qunell and redshirt junior Kate Matoskova, both of whom are Mavericks that swam the event as an exhibition race.
CMU won the first 13 events of this meet, and the only events in which a Mines swimmer placed first were the men’s 100-meter freestyle, the men’s 100-meter backstroke, and the men’s 500-meter freestyle. The Mavericks took second place in all of these events.
This win extended the women’s RMAC win streak to 34 dual meets, while the men extended their conference win streak to 13. But right now, the Mavericks are primarily focused on their lofty end-of-season goals.
“That meet was just one step in a long journey. Our swimmers aspire to be the best team in America. That means we’ll be at our best when it matters the most: at the NCAA Championships in March,” said Wender.
The swimmers on the team are fully bought into this mindset as well.
“We are happy with the win, but this team is focused on our big goals. Being great at the end [of the season] is important to us. We are just getting started,” said Sampson.
The dive team did not compete against Mines, but will join the swimmers when they travel to Laramie to take on the University of Wyoming this Friday, Nov. 3. Last year, Wyoming narrowly defeated the Mavs at their home pool.
