The Monmouth College swim team traveled to DePauw University in Indiana for a two day invitational meet. The men’s team did exceptionally well, placing forth overall against some of the best Division III swim teams in the nation.

Both days of the meet followed the same schedule; in the morning the team swam in preliminary events and competed in final events in the afternoon. Individually, the swimmers did phenomenally; many of the swimmers broke personal records that they had held since high school. Sophomore Matt O’Rourke was one of these cases, as was Joe Moran, who joyously expressed his excitement for this achievement: “I am really looking forward to swimming again!” He further explained that his record was from junior year in high school, a very long time not to break a personal best. Senior Kurt Niemeier had a very good day, as did Freshman Kevin Raske.

On a side note, Moran just received conference honors for the Heartland Division water polo conference. He also received a nomination for all-American in the same conference.

According to O’Rourke, the team is receiving great morale boosts from its success at their most recent meets; he said, “The team needed this meet to prove to ourselves that our hard work up to this point has been worth it. This is going to motivate us to continue working diligently for conference.”

The women’s team followed the same schedule as the men. While not as successful in ranking as the men’s team (the women placed eighth), they still cited the meet as a good experience for the team.

Sophomore Annie Lane commented on the team’s success in the meet: “I think the meet went really well, the girls all seemed to really pull together. A lot of time was dropped off of the swims and many of us broke our season records during the meet.” She also mentioned that this meet is considerably faster than the swimming conference in February, meaning that if a swimmer does well at the DePauw invitational, then they are likely to swim well at conference.

This bodes well for many of the women, including Lane, who received two second places and broke a school record in the 200 M, as well as senior Heather Plum and sophomore Meaghan Gritzenbach.

This was also the last meet for senior Inna Lonchyna, who is graduating from Monmouth at semester. Lane had this to say about Lonchyna this season: “It was great having her on the team and seeing her swim this season even though she knew that she only had this semester of the season.”

Thus far, Monmouth’s swim team has had a lot of success. They are looking to continue their good play in their next meet, which is on Jan. 5 against Principia College.

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