Notre Dame places second at home Invite meet
By COLLEEN McCARTHY
Sports Writer
What a difference a day makes.
The Notre Dame men's swimming team finised fourth after the first day of competition but rebounded to take second at the Notre Dame Invitational this weekend at the Rolfs Aquatic Center.
The Irish stumbled to fourth on Thursday thanks to a disqualification in the final event.
Head coach Tim Welsh who saw the Invitational as the focal point of the fall semester in evaluating the team's progress attributed the surge to second place to a number of factors.
"In simplest terms, we swam faster," said Welsh. "But the team as a unit strengthened itself and became a more cohesive and unified team going into Friday and Saturday's competitions.
"We really grew a lot as a team during the Invitational and it is amazing that it took a disqualification on Thursday night to make that happen."
With strong competition from Michigan State, Western Kentucky and other universities, another key to the Irish's move in the standings was swimming well Friday morning and managing to qualify more people in higher positions in the field of swimmers. This enabled the men to score more points in Friday and Saturday night's event finals.
The Irish finished second place overall with 1346 points and were followed by Western Kentucky University with 1,207 points. Michigan State won the Invitational with 1,451 points.
Strong individual performances came from senior captain Ryan Verlin who took first place in both the 400 yard individual medley and the 200 yard butterfly and from Jonathan Pierce, who won the 1,650 freestyle.
Sophomore Andy Maggio paced the diving team with a second-place finish in the one-meter competition.
But it was a suprise performance from junior David Horak, a consistently strong finisher for the team in the backstroke and butterfly events, who played a big part in the team's second place finish.
Winning three events and breaking University records in two of the events, Horak was the meet's standout performer.
Horak won the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 50.61 breaking the record set by teammate Bryan Skorney of 50.76. He followed up that performance winning the 200-yard backstroke in a time of 1:49.90, shattering the record of 1:51.53 set by James Scott-Brown. In addition, Horak was a member of the winning 200 medley relay team and finished second in the 100-yard butterfly.
"David has been swimming well for us all season long, but he hasn't been in the spotlight in the past, so it's good for the team to have one more person performing at that level," said Welsh.
Now the Irish are beginning to look ahead to the Big East Championship in February. Since it is the first year qualifying times will be required, one of the team's goal for the Invitational was to qualify in as many events as possible for the Big East Championship.
Welsh's swimmers didn't disappoint.
"We had 22 qualifiers for the Big East come out of this meet and that is a very high number," said Welsh.
Preparing for the meets of the second half of the season and the Big East Championship also means a more intense training regimen.
"What happens to us in the training area for the next month will be critical for the rest of the season," said Welsh. "Our emphasis all season has been to be as good as our level of improvement, and we will continue to focus on swimming faster and continuing to improve."
All Sports Stories for Monday, December 4, 2000
