Three all-conference swims highlight final day of PCSC meet
February 19, 2013
Jamie Foland
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The Alaska women's swim team completed competition at the 2013 Pacific Collegiate Swimming and Diving Conference Championship with three more All-Conference swims, including a runner-up showing on Saturday at the La Mirada Regional Aquatics Center.
The Nanooks finished the championship in eighth place as a team with 590.5 points. UC San Diego won the team title with 1,364.5 points, followed by Cal State East Bay in second (954) and Simon Fraser in third (886).
"You can see the impact Simon Fraser had right away," head coach Scott Lemley said. "They won four of the five relays and we beat them in the 800 free relay but its a very fast conference. We suffered from the heat a little bit and that was a challenge."
He continued about the toughness of the PCSC, "We're so far off the beaten path , that if a swimmer decides not to go to Stanford, she could go to Cal Baptist, UC San Diego or Azusa."
Junior Bente Heller (Hamburg, Germany/Communication) was part of two of the All-PCSC swims as she placed second in the 100 freestyle with a time of 51.26 seconds, being out touched at the wall by Simon Fraser's Nicole Cossey, who clocked a time of 50.98. She won the preliminary heat in 51.29.
"She had a good swim in the 100," head coach Lemley said. "It wasn't her best time but it was a good swim, she just got touched out at the end. She was All-Conference in both the 200 and 50 but this was her only medal, finishing in the top three."
In the final event of the championship, the 400 free relay was yet again a tight race until the end. Alaska's tandem of sophomores Danielle Lyons (Prince Albert, Saskatchewan/Biological sciences), Margot Adams (Anchorage, Alaska/Political science), Gabi Summers (Cheyenne, Wyo./Foreign language) and Heller placed third after hitting the wall in 3:28.75. Simon Fraser won the relay in 3:27.53 and UC San Diego was runner-up in 3:27.79.
Adams earned a second All-Conference accolade as she finished sixth earlier in the evening in the 200 butterfly. She completed the eight-lap race with a time of 2:06.74, just shy of her lifetime best, and was more than a second improvement from the prelims swim. She also placed 17th in the 100 free with an NCAA B-cut time of 52.52, giving her three individual events for the national meet.
"It goes to show how specialized each event is," Lemley. "Margot repeated as the conference champion in the 100 and five different girls beat her in the 200."
Freshman Linnea Doumas (Tucson, Ariz./Foreign Language) won the consolation heat to take ninth place in the 200 backstroke with a mark of 2:11.71 after she was 16th in prelims with a time of 2:16.23. Summers swam the event as an exhibition and was ninth in preliminaries in 2:09.69.
Three swimmers placed in the top 20 in the 1,650 free. Sophomore Lauren Bailey (Lakewood, Colo./Fisheries) took 15th in 18:40.55, senior Meghan O'Leary (Seward, Alaska/Biology) was 17th in 18:45.08 and freshman McKinley Wallace (Anchorage, Alaska/Biological sciences) finished 19th with a time of 18:52.02.
Additionally, freshman Eileen Audette (Seward, Alaska/Fisheries) placed 20th in the 200 breaststroke consolation after registering a time of 2:29.71. That time was more than half a second faster than her 21st-place swim from prelims.
The Nanooks will now wait until mid-week next week when the NCAA will release the official field for the 2013 NCAA Championship, which will be held March 6-9 in Birmingham, Ala.