Fall season concludes for MU swimming and diving with weekend meet

The Marshall University swimming and diving team concludes the fall portion of the 2009-10 season at the Hilltopper Invite hosted by Western Kentucky in Bowling Green, Ky.

The three day event begins today and concludes Saturday.

The Thundering Herd (4-4) is coming off its third consecutive win by final scores of 146-88 and 127-109 over Radford and Campbell. Divers Rachel Hannum and Haley Holmquist set new career-bests in the 1-meter and 3-meter dives, respectively. Herd swimmers Jenny Johnsson and Arlie Rykosky won the 200-yard freestyle and 100-yard freestyle and Vera Niemeyer took first place in the 1,000-meter freestyle and 100-yard backstroke. Holmquist and Niemeyer earned Conference USA Diver and Swimmer honors Tuesday for their performances at Radford.

WKU (3-1) defeated Xavier 165-104 over the weekend and Hilltopper swimmers Claire Alexandre and Claire Donahue broke program records with wins in the 500-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly. The Hilltoppers won 13 events against the Musketeers.

Marshall head swimming coach Leonard Kraus said the WKU Invite is the midseason meet and only a portion of the team will compete in the three-day meet.

"We've got a handful of girls that are going to swim through the meet, so they aren't going to rest," Kraus said. "They're just going to continue to practice. Our goal is to go in and have season bests in every swim and really kind of set ourselves up for training for the rest of the semester."

Hannum was a freshman the last time the Herd swam at the WKU Invite. She said she likes the longer meets but they can also be mentally exhausting.

"For the swimmers, they go early in the morning and then we all come back for finals at an evening session," Hannum said. "If you go on to finals, that's twice a day for two or three days. When you're at the pool, you focus on what you need to do to score well and have a faster time. When you're out of the pool, you don't think about it anymore."

The top 16 swimmers and divers from the morning events progress to the evening events, Kraus said.

"The approach is going to be concentrating a little bit more on race styling, making sure we're swimming fast in the morning so we can come back and score at night," Kraus said. "You've got to be able to concentrate, come back, find out what they did well, what they need to work on and try to make those corrections for the evening."

The members of the team not competing will rest and have less intense practices, Kraus said.

"We've cut back on weights and yardage and the intensity of the yardage," Kraus said. "When we're resting and when we're at full strength, we can push through being tired to be as fast as we can."

The Herd begins their most difficult training phase of the season upon returning from WKU. The team will resume two-a-days and weight lifting during part of Thanksgiving break and will follow a similar schedule during winter break to prepare for the next meet Jan. 16.

"We get to go home (Dec.) 20th for 10 days for Christmas break," Hannum said. "We come back (Dec. 30) and we fly out the 30th or 31st for Florida. We'll train there probably about 10 days. We'll have two-a-days everyday."

     Marlowe Hereford can be contacted at hereford4@marshall.edu.