TUCSON, ARIZ. – The New Mexico State swim team completed a quad meet on Friday afternoon Tucson, Ariz. with the University of Arizona, Northern Arizona and Oregon State. The meet saw the team prevail over Oregon State (168.00-126.00), but fall against Arizona (193.00-104.00).
Friday's meet consisted of 16 events including 200-yard medley relay, 1000-yarrd freestyle, 200-yard freestyle, 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard breaststroke, 200-yard butterfly, 50-yard freestyle, 1-meter diving, 100-yard freestyle, 200-yard backstroke, 200-yard breaststroke, 500-yard freestyle, 100-yard butterfly, 3-meter diving 200-yard individual medley and 200-yard freestyle relay.
Head coach
Rick Pratt commented on the day's events saying, "It was nice to defeat OSU today but overall we had a hard time finding any speed. We need to recover better, moving forward.
Lauren Wood and
Picabo Bender had solid swims and
Lanie McAlpin was strong today. It was also exciting to watch Eliana Beaudry in her Aggie debut. We've got a couple more weeks to get better before UNM and then WAC meets and I know we're doing what's needed for the end game."
One of the best finishes of the day came in the 200-yard breaststroke, as sophomore
Lauren Wood grabbed second place with a time of 2:21.05 in the event. Another strong showing was in the 500-yard freestyle as
Picabo Bender clocked in at 5:09.31, good for third.
Next up, in the 1000-yard freestyle, the Aggies grabbed the fourth, fifth and sixth best times. This was led by junior
Picabo Bender (10:42.84), followed by Lilly Araujo (10:49.65) and then
Gabrielle Sanchez (10:53.39). Then, the 200-yard freestyle saw freshman Johanna Pettersson take sixth, clocking in at 1:57.58.
The fourth event was the 100-yard backstroke, an event which four Aggies placed in the top-10. Beaudry paced NM State with a time of 59.17, coming in at fifth, just edging out Knagg whose time of 59.98 put her in sixth. After that was
Georgia Brown in eighth posting a time of 1:00.06 and rounding out the group was
Ruby Rodriguez in 10th, as she came in at 1:02.26.
In the 200-yard medley relay, the team of
Alix Knagg,
Hanna McGowan,
Makena Sutherland and
Sina Wegel had the sixth best time at 1:49.25. Coming in closely behind was Eliana Beaudry,
Lauren Wood,
Georgia Brown and
Lauryn Dean, in a tie for seventh, with a time of 1:50.00
NM State also performed well in the diving event as
Abigail Watson competed in the 3-meter dive and put up a score of 248.45, which was the second best total of the day. Mackinna Hauff also took second in the 1-meter dive as she posted a score of 265.80.
Closing out the day,
Lauren Wood had another strong showing before it was all said and done, as she came in at 2:12.07 in the 200-yard individual medley, which gave her third.
The New Mexico State Aggies diving team will be the next to compete in a diver's only meet at the Air Force Diving Invite in Colorado Springs, Colo., on Jan. 27 and Jan. 28.
