ND Swimming: Irish men and women, Belles finish in top 5 at ND Relays: Irish squads each finish first, win all but two events overall
By JOE HETTLER
Associate Sports Editor
In their first meet of the season, the Notre Dame mens and womens swimming and diving teams dominated the competition en route to winning the 2002 Notre Dame Relays Saturday.
The teams combined to win all but two events during the meet. The mens team took first place by earning 220 points, which was 62 points better than second-place Milwaukee-Wisconsin and over 100 points ahead of third-place Valparaiso. The womens team outdistanced Illnois State 220-166 for first-place, while Milwaukee Wisconsin came in third.
The Irish men won 12 events on the day, losing only the 800 freestyle because of a disqualification. The women also won 12 events, but lost the 500 crescendo relay after being disqualified.
"All the freshman really swam well, especially Doug Bauman. He probably had one of the best swims of the night," sophomore Frank Krakowski said. "He had a really excellent swim in the first event so he really got everyone started off."
Bauman, along with relay partners Tyler Grenda, Patrick Hefferman and David Moisan, won the 400 medley relay with a time of 3:33.46. Krakowski, Jason Fitzpatrick, Tim Randolph and Drew Pittman added a 200 free relay win by posting a time of 1:27.39.
The womens 200 free relay team of Heidi Hendrick, Courtney Campbell, Kalei Walker and Laurie Musgrave finished with a time of 1:39.39 to grab first-place in that event.
Krakowski said he knows there are a lot of difficult events in the future.
"This is probably the toughest schedule, from what I know, that we've had to date," Krakowski said. "We have to go to Texas to swim at Texas Christian University and Air Force to swim Air Force, plus we have another couple top 25 ranked teams. So ... everyone's goal is to win the Big East this year. We should hopefully be in contention to win."
Krakowski believes the Irish were confident they could win both mens and womens fields during the weekend meet because of their depth.
"We kind of thought [we would do well] just because of the teams that came in we didn't think they had the depth that we had," Krakowski. "They had a couple fast people but they weren't as deep as we were. In events where you don't have depth you may win the event but the other team may come in second, third and fourth and then they end up having more points in the event than you."
The mens team next faces Kalamzoo on Oct. 11 at home, while the womens team travels to the Colorado to take on the Air Force Academy on Oct. 18.
All Sports Stories for Monday, October 7, 2002
