After getting off to a slow start, Wittenberg’s men’s and women’s swim teams are preparing to compete in their biggest meet of the year. This meet, the Transylvania Invitational, will host several other Division III universities from Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky and will be held in Lexington, Kentucky.
This will be the first year the Tigers will be competing in the Transylvania Invitation, as in years past they have competed in the DePauw Invitational in Greencastle, Indiana. The purpose of the meet is to compete against multiple other teams similar to Wittenberg. The team has been rested up and adjusted its training this week in order to insure the best times.
So far the results have been successful for both the men’s and women’s team. On Saturday morning, all of the swimmers who competed were able to achieve their own personal best times of the season. This was the first session of a four session meet which includes both a morning preliminary meet followed by a finals meet in the afternoon for those who qualify by placing in the top sixteen participants of each individual event.
On Saturday night, the Tigers had several highlights including the school records being broken and first place finishes for women’s swimmers and divers freshmen Emily Allen in 1 meter diving and sophomore Dani Lacy in the 100 yard freestyle. Other first place finishes were achieved by sophomore Maggie White in the 500 yard freestyle, senior Molly Gustafson in the 100 yard breaststroke, as well as the 400 Medley relay and the 800 freestyle relay. On the men’s side sophomore Kevin Duhl won 3 meter diving and junior James Dumstorf won the 100 yard breaststroke by posting a NCAA “B” cut time.
As day two of the two day invitational continued Wittenberg swimmers remained strong and gave it all they had to finish on a positive note. Lacy went on to win the 200 yard freestyle and freshman Amy Schultz took home a blue ribbon in the 100 yard butterfly. As in day one, both Duhl and Dumstorf won events on day two with Duhl winning the 1 meter diving and Dumstorf the 200 yard breaststroke. Also just like day one, Dumstorf landed himself another NCAA “B” cut in the 200 yard breaststroke.
The invite meet proved to be a successful one for the Tigers. The women’s team capture the first place spot and the men’s team finished third in the seven team competition. The women’s team defeated the second place team by nearly two times the points making it the most dominating win for the Lady Tigers this year.
After the Transylvania Invitational the Wittenberg swimming and diving teams will return to Springfield where they will have practice off for the rest of the semester until coming back to campus early on Dec. 30. From there both the men’s and women’s teams will travel to Deerfield Beach, Florida to begin their two week training trip before coming back to campus on Jan. 8. The season will conclude for both teams on February 12-14 at the NCAC Championship meet hosted in Canton, Ohio. There the Tigers will attempt to better the times they reached at the Transylvania Invitational as they compete against perennial Division III powers Kenyon College and Denison University who have won the past 34 NCAA Division III swimming championships.
