The University of Northern Iowa swim and dive team will hit the road separately this weekend. The swimmers will travel to Omaha, Nebraska, to take part in the two day UNO Invitational. The preliminary sessions will begin at 10:00 a.m. on both Friday and Saturday. Finals on Friday will begin at 6:00 p.m. and Saturday’s finals will start at 5:00 p.m. The meet will be held at the HYPER Swimming Pool on the UNO campus. The following is the order of events for the meet:
Friday, Nov. 30
200 yard freestyle relay
400 yard individual medley
100 yard breaststroke
50 yard freestyle
200 yard backstroke
100 yard butterfly
200 yard freestyle
400 yard medley relay
1650 yard freestyle (timed final)
3-meter diving
Saturday, Dec. 1
200 yard medley relay
800 yard freestyle relay (timed final)
200 yard individual medley
500 yard freestyle
100 yard backstroke
200 yard breaststroke
100 yard freestyle
200 yard butterfly
400 yard freestyle relay
1000 yard freestyle (timed final)
1-meter diving
The UNI divers will travel to Iowa City to compete in the Hawkeye Invitational. Preliminaries will start at 10:00 a.m. on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Finals will start at 6:00 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, but will begin at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. The meet will be held at Campus Recreation and Wellness Center on the Iowa campus.
On November 9th, the Panthers swam against the UNO Mavericks. UNI fell to the Mavericks 149-145 in Omaha. Bethany Hovland took first place in both the 1-meter and 3-meter dive. She scored 250.04 points in the 1-meter and 249.23 points in the 3-meter. Allie Bey and Sarah Kemp took second and third respectively in both dive events as well. Freshman Taylor Ostrowski continued her dominance in the 200 butterfly. She finished first in that event with a time of 2:09.07 and over three seconds ahead of the second place finisher. Freshman Sierra Sachtjen took second place in the 200 freestyle with a time of 2:00.19. Natalie Johnson took the runner up spot in the 100 backstroke with a time of 1:01.62. She finished second in the 200 backstroke as well. Johnson had a time of 2:13.52.
The Panthers then traveled to Lincoln to take on the University of Nebraska on November 10th. UNI fell to the Huskers 155-82. Bethany Hovland finished third in the 1-meter dive event with a score of 266.18 points. Miki Freese, going up against her former team, finished third in the 50 freestyle with a time of 25.24. Taylor Ostrowski took a third place finish in the 1000 freestyle with a time of 11:06.44.
“The girls have had a couple weeks to kind of recover and prepare ourselves for the UNO Invitational that we will be attending this Friday and Saturday,” said head coach Doug Humphrey. “Nice thing is this is our first opportunity to have a prelim/final meet instead of just going into a dual meet where it is just one and done. We have a chance to swim fast in the morning and then hopefully improve in the afternoon. The difference in our dual meets versus invitationals is that our invitationals really give us the chance to show the depth of our team. Invitationals also help prepare us for the Missouri Valley Conference Championships which is prelim/finals and gives us a chance to take a much finer look at the team and see where we continue to improve.”
