PULLMAN, Wash. (November 2, 2018) – The Northern Arizona swimming and diving team fell to Washington State on Nov. 2 in Pullman, Wash. This marked the second straight loss of the season for the Lumberjacks. The final score of the meet was 135-126. The meet was made up of only swimming events as the Cougars don't have a diving team.
"I saw big improvements in many of the times today compared to last week, and I just want the team to keep improving every week," NAU head swimming coach
Andy Johns said.
The 'Jacks were able to take the top spot in four of the 11 events in the meet, with the most success coming from
Monique King in the freestyle events. King recorded 18 of the 126 points for NAU while the next closest Lumberjack was
Andrea Schmidt.
NAU started off the meet in a hole after Washington State took five of the first six events. The lone Lumberjack win came from King in the 200 freestyle with a time of 1:52.36. This time was almost three seconds faster than the next closest opponent.
Northern Arizona started to close the gap on the Cougars created in the sixth event when the team took 16 of the 19 points in the event. The 'Jacks placed three swimmers in the top three in the event with Schmidt in first,
Keeley Vardeman in second and
Maddie Seidl in third. This win marked the first win of the 2018-19 season for Schmidt who finished the 200 butterfly with the time of 2:05.31.
The 'Jacks continued to gain ground on WSU in the 50 freestyle when
Elisa Rodriguez took the top spot and the nine points in the event. Following the event, Northern Arizona trailed Washington State by only five with a score of 68-63.
"After the break only being down by five points was big as there were multiple races that we only lost by a hundredth of a second," Johns said. "If those races went the other way, the outcome of today would have been different."
Unfortunately, this was the closest that Northern Arizona would get to the lead as the Cougars would go on to win three of the next four events. The Lumberjacks' last win came in event 11, the 500 freestyle, where King took home her second win of the day. King finished the race with a time of 4:58.63, a whole six seconds faster than the second-place finish from the Washington State swimmer.
"We were pretty tough today, but we need to get even tougher moving forward, especially going into tomorrow's meet," Johns said.
Looking Forward
Northern Arizona will be back in action tomorrow, Nov. 3, in Moscow, Idaho in a double dual against the University of Idaho and Seattle University at 10:30 a.m. MST. This will be a big meet for the Lumberjacks as both opponents are Western Athletic Conference foes.
