The Cougars’ swim team earned a split against UNLV Nov. 9 with the women’s team emerging victorious with a score of 198-102 and the men’s team falling 140-160.
“Our women swam well across the board and rebounded well after Boise State,” BYU head coach John Brooks said.
The 200 medley relay started the meet off strong for the women, team Brittani Finlayson, Kimberly Doroghian and Alexandria Sorensen winning with a time of 1:45.12.
Alexandra Dodds and Camille Okelberry won first and second in the women’s 1000 free event with the time of 10:37.27 and 10:39.87 respectively.
“Our girl’s team really stepped it up from last year,” Okelberry said. “Winning a dual meet gets you so excited and makes you want to push through to the rest of the season.”
Riley Buer also scored a first-place win for BYU in the 100 breast. It was her first win of the season with a time of 1:07.30.
“They were a good team,” said Buer. “We had our best lineup and came in here with a really good mindset to beat them.”
The men’s team, however, was just shy of defeating the Rebels.
“For the men, we knew it was going to be a battle, and we knew it was going to be tough,” Brooks said. “But UNLV is fast, and we did as well as we were hoping to do, but we needed to win one more event in order for us to win the meet, and it came down the last relay.”
The final relay swam by Stott Bushnell, McKay King, Andrew Rutherfurd and Jake Taylor was just five tenths of a second behind the UNLV team, which may have been the deciding race to tip the win in favor of the Cougars.
“Because we were so close it shows that we are competitive and gave them a challenge,” Rainer Ng said.
BYU divers swept the 1- and 3-meter dive by taking first and second place.
“I think we did great today, and we’re showing great progression,” said head diving coach Keith Russell. “I am excited for the University of Arizona Invite, and if we can do what we did today then we’ll do great there too.”
Cougars Raleigh Williams Taylor, Mackenzie Rands and Haley Francois swept the 3-m dive winning first, second and third place respectively.
Diver Nicholas Suder scored 322.575 in the 1-m dive and 309.90 in the 3-m. Teammate Matt Hooper took second in the 1-m, and Edward Young took third.
The Cougars look forward to being able to train hard and compete again at the UNLV invite on Nov. 21–23.
