STEUBENVILLE, Ohio – In their first meet since November 15, the Franciscan University women's swimming and diving team defeated conference foe University of Pittsburgh at Bradford 111-68 while losing to Division II Frostburg State University 105-80.
The double-dual meet featured two school records for the Lady Barons, and a dramatic finish in the 200-yard individual medley for senior Molly Coogan.
"I'm not as focused on the overall scores as I am the times," head coach Becky Recznik said about how she judges the success of a meet at this point in the season. "After two very strenuous weeks of winter camp, not only are some of the girls back at their best times but some of them dropped. That's a big accomplishment."
The team started off the meet in a frenzy, with a dominant six second win over Frostburg St. in the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 2:03.43. Swimming the third leg of the relay was junior Aimee Vunovich, who along with junior Allison Kelly swam her first meet of the year after studying abroad in the fall.
"It's really hard to come back in the middle of a season but they got out there and raced," Recznik said. "They're great and their attitude has really brought up the team."
The team finished the meet even stronger than they started, blowing away the competition with a 4:01.24 performance in the 400-yard freestyle relay, a new school record and 27 seconds ahead of Frostburg St.
Recznik said that while she knew relays were one of her team's strengths that the performance took her by surprise since they hadn't swam that event earlier in the season.
"Obviously we have a very fast relay team. With a little bit more training we can probably knock that under four minutes which would be the fast time in our conference," Recznik said. "Relays are sort of where you win it or lose it at championships so if we can win those, that's really big for us."
In between the two outstanding relay performances were a number of strong times in individual events. Junior team captain Maria Giuliani broke the school record in the 200-yard freestyle with a 2:06.18 win.
The freestyle stroke was also good to senior Molly Coogan, who trailed two swimmers heading in the final stroke of the 200-yard individual medley. As the race switched to freestyle, Coogan instantly started to close the gap, taking second before the turn and just beating a Frostburg State swimmer by .24 seconds for first place.
"The funny thing is that there were a significant number of flaws in that race for her," Recznik said. "But her strengths obviously showed through."
Freshman Nicole Marshall also put up a winning performance with a time of 1:04.30 in the 100-yard backstroke while Vunovich and freshman Naomie Sebastian each finished second in the 100-yard butterfly and the 100-yard breaststroke respectively.
The Lady Barons have a quick turnaround, as the travel to Bethany College in 24 hours for a 6 pm meet.
