California Baptist University’s men’s and women’s swimming and diving team’s season is in full swing with four meets already in the books.
The men and women have had similar schedules with both team’s first official meet at the Malibu Invite on Oct. 12. The men finished second and the women in third place.
The following week, the swim teams traveled to the Roadrunner Invite at California State University, Bakersfield, where both the men and women finished third. The divers stayed at CBU for the Lancer Diving Invite event.
“We just had our first dual meet against the University of Nevada, Las Vegas,” said Rick Rowland, head coach of men’s and women’s swimming and diving. “UNLV and Bakersfield are our WAC opponents and they have improved from last year.”
Rowland said the freshmen on the CBU women’s team have shown great promise. He also said that on the men’s side, Evan Honer, freshman business administration major, has shown outstanding diving.
The teams are still in the beginning of their seasons with the WAC Championships coming in February 2020.
“I really like our practices this year,” said Rita Smirnova, sophomore public relations major and freestyler for women’s swimming. “Right now we are working harder and a lot more, so we are very tired.”
Smirnova said there will come a time where the team will be able to perform at their best, but it is not now.
Both teams just finished a meet against CSUB and Pomona Pitzer on Nov. 2. The Lancer teams won against Pomona but lost narrowly to CSUB in com- petitive races.
“We just finished our fourth weekend in a row of swim meets and we did well,” said Ryan Schade, junior aviation flight major and breastroker for men’s swimming. “There have been some great swims across the board and I’m excited to see how we’ll do at our mid-season (Pepperdine Invitationals meet) before Thanksgiving.”
The divers will compete Nov. 8-10 at the Trojan Diving Invitationals at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. The swimmers will compete Nov. 22-24 in the Pep- perdine Winter Invitationals at East Los Angeles College.
Schade said the next couple weeks will be full of hard training in preparations for the mid-season. The upcoming months, with fewer competitions, will be filled with training that will build the team for WAC Championships in Houston on Feb. 26-29.
