BYU men’s swimmers dominate in pool while women’s swim team suffers close defeat

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The Cougars had both a win and a loss Oct. 25 at the first swim meet of the season hosted at BYU against Colorado Mesa and Boise State.

The men blew Colorado Mesa out of the water by taking first place in every event and finished with an impressive 216-64 final score.

Rafael Alfaro swims the breast stroke in a race. Photo by Maddi Dayton.
Rafael Alfaro swims the breast stroke in a race. Photo by Maddi Dayton

“We’re happy to have Colorado Mesa come and give us some competition,” said BYU head coach John Brooks. “We performed great and took first place in every single event today.”

The pool record for the 400 individual medley, previous established by Gary Tan in 2004, of 3:59.41 was broken by Hayden Palmer with a time of 3:57.91.

Palmer knew he wanted to break a few pool records at the beginning of the season. The last three weeks and the weekend before the meet were taxing for Palmer, so he was pleased when he beat the record by a solid two seconds.

“I was so stoked; it’s cool to have these little goals and to reach them,” Palmer said.

Palmer looks forward to breaking some more pool records and qualifying for NCAA at the invite to Texas near the end of the season.

In addition to Palmer’s swimming, Nicholas Suder and Matt Hooper took first for BYU’s diving and scored 341.10 and 308.55.

Chad Sorensen earned his first individual event win of the meet in the 100 breast with Andrew Rutherford and Michael King close behind.

However, victory was not in reach for the female swimmers, as they lost to Boise State 178-122.

“It was close for the most part, but Boise pulled away at points. We lifted really hard at practice this week, so based off of how hard we lifted in the weight room, our girls performed well,” Brooks said.

It was a close match as Boise State pulled ahead, sometimes winning points by fractions of seconds. In the last race of the meet, Hailey Campbell, Alexandira Sorensen, Kimberly Doroghian and Andrea Grant swam the 200 free relay in 1:34.99, just seven-hundredths of a second behind Boise’s relay team.

Campbell earned the first victory for the Cougars in the 100 back with a time of 56.24 and in the 200 back with a time of 2:03.34.

Grant took the second win in the 100 free with a time of 52.89.

In diving, Raleigh Williams Taylor came in third with 275.10 points with Megan Johnson and Mackenzie Rands coming in fourth and fifth.

“The emphasis we had this meet was to get everyone to race, which we did a good job at … we overall feel well about how the girls swam,” said assistant coach Yolanda Bates.

The Cougars have the next two weeks off to prepare for their meet on Saturday, Nov. 9, against UNLV.

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