MEET NOTES
CLEVELAND, Miss. - Following a weekend road-trip to Missouri where the Statesmen defeated then-No.24 Missouri S&T before battling the reigning Division-II national champions Drury, Delta State will head to Arkadelphia, Ark. to face Ouachita Baptist and Henderson State. Following the meets in Missouri last week, the Statesmen are now ranked No. 19 and the Lady Statesmen are ranked No. 21 according to CollegeSwimming.com.
Matthew SwaineThe weekend began with the Statesmen picking up the 110-95 victory at Missouri S&T.
Max Pendall (4:05.01) and
Cody Lavoie (4:05.11) finished 1-2 in the 400-Individual Medley. Pendall has the fifth best time this season, while Lavoie has the seventh best. The Statesmen won the 400-Medley Relay (3:27.48) to start the meet. Individual victories were earned by
Vlad Zinca in the 200-Butterfly (1:52.59),
Fabrice Wendel won the 100-Freestyle (47.48) for the third consecutive meet to start the season,
Yvan Nys won the 200-Backstroke (1:55.92), and
Matteo Fraschi set a pool record while winning the 200-Breaststroke (2:04.35).
The following day both teams competed at Drury University, the reigning national champions for each program. Zinca picked up his second event win of the weekend by claiming the 100-Butterfly (50.04) ahead Stanislav Kuzmin, who finished fourth at the 2014 NCAA championship. Zinca also swam on the second place 200-Medley Relay (1:34.54) and finished third in the 200-Freestyle (1:44.83).
Matthew Swaine (284.25) won the 3M diving competition. Swaine would add a runner-up finish (286.72) from 1M to qualify for the 2015 NCAA Division II Championships.
Makis Jorgensen finished runner-up in the 1,000-Freestyle (9:51.68) while Wendel took second place in the 100-Freestyle (46.90)and Fraschi was second in the 100-Breaststroke (57.30).
Melanie Tombers swept three individual events with wins in the 1,000-Freestyle (10:23.23), 400-Individual Medley (4:28.14), and 500-Freestyle (5:05.65). The 200-Medley Relay team of
Anastasia Klyarovskaya,
Kirsten Stroven,
Danielle Dugas, and
Chloe Bennett (1:49.28) took second place with the first swim of the meet. Klyarovskaya scored second place finishes in the 200-Freestyle (1:55.03) and 100-Backstroke (57.75). The Lady Statesmen added a few more runner up finishes with Dugas in the 100-Butterfly (1:00.26), Bennett in the 100-Freestyle (53.87), and Stroven in the 100-Breaststroke (1:07.31).
Zinca and Tombers were rewarded as New South Intercollegiate Swim Conference Swimmers of the Week. This was the second time this season that Tombers won the award, previously winning on Oct. 14.
Ouachita Baptist is swimming in just the second meet this season, as both the men's and women's teams were defeated by Henderson State on Oct. 24. While the Red Wave have had several meets this season, competing this past weekend as hosts of the two-day HSU Invitational where both HSU programs took the top spot. Both foes are members of the NSISC with HSU taking a pair of third place finishes from the conference meet last year and OBU finishing fourth.
