For some reason, anything in downtown Chicago just screams exciting to me. The Horizon League Swimming and Diving Championships are proving to be no different.
At the Flames Natatorium, the events got underway early on Wednesday. The prelims for the Men's 3-meter Dive began at 10:30 this morning. By the time I arrived in Chicago, they were complete, and the pools were empty. Still, there was plenty of hustle and bustle around the natatorium.
Throughout the afternoon, teams were in and out of the water, but the real crowd came in about an hour and a half before finals began. Teams poured in with matching t-shirts and eager faces. Their fans started getting here around the same time, many of them decked out in same pretty spirited attire.
Coaches couldn't hide their eagerness for the competition either. Paul Moniak is coach of host UIC, and he understands how it feels when teams are out to beat you, the men of UIC being last years champions. But as Coach Moniak said, "You don't race them on paper, you race them in the water."
Green Bay's women are looking for their sixth straight championship, but Coach Jim Merner knows how tough the competition is this year.
The excitement and thrill of night one continued. The first race was the Women's 200-yard Freestyle Relay. (This is the short of it.) Last year, Green Bay took care of all of the relay championships, which obviously included this one. This time around, a couple other teams wanted their chance at the title. Don't get me wrong, the Phoenix came out for an impressive race, but Wright State decided it was theirs to win. And they did, with a time of 1:35.45.
Next up were the men for the 200-yard Freestyle Relay. The teams held quite a bit tighter in this one, but Cleveland State pulled ahead in the third leg. In a repeat win from last year, they finished this one in 1:21.28.
Four heats of 1,000-yard Freestyle for the women followed. That's forty laps. I felt tired just watching! (And this is where the long comes in.) Three great heats led to the final heat, featuring the best times in the league. A race that started fairly close became the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Danielle Wegner's race to beat her record. The crowd started watching the clock closely about three-quarters of the way through the race, and the murmurs grew to cheers as she approached the end. Her previous record was 10:06:65, and today she touched the wall after swimming for less than 10 minutes (9:51.81 to be exact).
Three heats for the men followed. In the third and final, Mark deSwardt took over around 500-yards into the competition, and he pulled away from there. His final time – 9:13.40. DeSwardt, a four-time Horizon League Swimmer of the Week, won the event last year as well.
With men's 3-meter diving up next, we saw six rounds of some stiff competition. (Most of them looked like tens to me, but the judges and I definitely didn't agree on that.) In the end, a couple impressive dives from Cleveland State's Josh Gonzalez took the cake, and he won with a score of 303.30.
The final event of the night, the 200-yard Medley Relay, is one of my favorites. It features some of the best of each team in every stroke. For the women, Milwaukee came out strong and took the lead in the backstroke. From there, the Green Bay Phoenix took control through the next three legs, and repeated this relay win in 1:42.83.
In the men's, UIC came out with the lead in the backstroke, but Cleveland State fought back from there. They won the championship with a time of 1:29.29.
So that was day one, and we have so much more coming in the next three days. I'll keep you updated here every night. You can watch live starting at 7pm Eastern Time, and keep up with the live blog as well. For now, Milwaukee leads the women, and Cleveland State is ahead after 8 events for the men, but we have so much left to see!
