The swim and dive teams reach their halfway mark in the season

By Nastassja Posso

NIAGARA UNIVERSITY, N.Y- Undeniably, this has been one of the best seasons for the NU men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams. The freshmen have stepped it up for the team in several occasions and it has really shown in the overall results for dual meets.

Being the halfway mark of the season for the Purple Eagles, the teams have already faced the great majority of their rivals for the MAAC. With a total of six meets, the teams only have two more dual meets after their big mid-season meet at the Zippy Invitational in Akron, Ohio.

So far the Women’s Swim and Dive teams have had victories against Siena and Fredonia and some very close loses against the other rivals. The Men’s team have not had many opportunities to race due to issues within their rival teams. However, they defeated University of Waterloo and Fredonia State.

Although it is clearly difficult to go a personal best time in season at dual meets, the women’s swim team has proven that anything is possible this season. Throughout the season there have been several records broken on the women’s swimming side and many relays have come close to breaking school record times as well.

In their first meet of the season, Hayley Tasselmyer broke the 200 breaststroke record with a time of 2:27.98. Tasselmyer also broke the 100 IM record against Colgate with a time of 1:01.21. Another record-breaker against Colgate was freshman, Avery Sanquist, who broke the 1000 free record with a time 10:34.08.

Aside from record breaking times, there have been several top ten best times in team history for the men and women.

The Women’s Swimming and Diving team now prepares to face some tough competition at the Zippy Invite. The teams they will face are University of Akron, University of Buffalo, Bowling Green State, Oakland, Toledo, St. Bonaventure, Bloomsburg and Clarion. All in which are in much more competitive conferences in comparison to the MAAC, with the exception of St. Bonaventure which is in the same conference as the purple eagles.

Due to shortage of the Men’s Team around the area in general, they will face a much smaller amount of schools, not making it nearly as competitive. At the invite, the team will face Oakland, St. Bonaventure, Clarion and Bloomsburg.

The Zippy Invite will begin the weekend of Dec. 30 until Jan. 2 with full days of prelims and finals. After that, the purple eagles will prepare to face their last two dual meets of the season before MAACs against conference rivals Canisius and St. Bonaventure.