By Geoffrey Paulsen
The BYU women''s swimming and diving team never trailed Friday, Jan. 20 2006, as they ended Colorado State University''s three meet winning streak with a score of 162-128.
'We swam a lot better this week,' head coach Stan Crump said. 'Once we won the first relay it set the tone for the rest of the night.'
The Cougars, who won 11 out of 16 events, came out strong and won the first race, the 200-yard medley relay. Freshman Leilani Roberts swam anchor with a split time of 23.62 seconds, her fastest time this year.
'I felt good about my races,' Roberts said. 'I spent a lot of time this week on starts and break outs and I pulled it off. Practice really paid off.'
Roberts also won the 50- and 100-yard freestyle.
The Cougars had two other stellar individual performances by sophomores U-Nice Chan and Angela Goodson. Both won all three of their races.
Chan won both of the long distance events, the 1,000-yard freestyle and the 500-yard freestyle, as well as the 200-yard butterfly. In the 500-yard freestyle, CSU''s Celes Parks and Ashley Lonon kept the race close, but after 14 lengths (350 yards) Chan pulled away. BYU junior Brittany Davis was hanging back in fourth place for most of the race but in the last 50 yards she passed both CSU swimmers to place second.
Goodson also won all three of her events: the 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard butterfly and the 200-yard individual medley.
Crump was happy to see Goodson''s hard work pay off.
'Angela''s been swimming really well,' he said. 'She''s been training really hard.'
Other notable finishes for the Cougars were sophomore Jaime Bloom, who won the 100 and 200-yard breaststroke, and sophomore diver Angela Nelson, who won the 3-meter diving with a score of 285.90, 15 points ahead of second place.
Crump saw a lot of improvement from last weekend''s matches.
'We needed to come out and compete,' he said. 'Last week we were rusty, not ready to compete mentally. When we taper we are going to be tough.'
(For comments, e-mail Geoffrey Paulsen at geoffreypaulsen@byu.net)