Domination for Rams at dual meet

One word comes to mind after watching the CSU vs. CU dual meet

and that is domination.

CSU’s swimming and diving team destroyed CU’s team 193-50. The

Rams won all 13 events in the meet. This was one of the biggest

margins of victory head coach John Mattos has seen in his 24-year

career at CSU.

Freshman Andi Newman led the Rams by winning all three events

she participated in. She annihilated her competition in the

1,000-meter freestyle, winning by more than 30 seconds. She also

had no problem winning the 500 and 200 freestyles.

“I definitely didn’t expect to win all three at a Division-I

level,” the humble Newman said of her wins. “This meet gave me a

lot of confidence due to the fact I could pull off those times when

swimming my events in such a short period of time.”

Having just completed the 500 freestyle, Newman did pull off a

season-best 2 minutes, 1.04 seconds in the 200 freestyle without

much rest.

Another major swimmer for the Rams was junior Seda Odzemir.

Odzemir posted her best times of the year, getting 25.54 seconds in

the 50 freestyle and 55.88 in the 100 freestyle.

“It feels really good to win,” Odzimer said. “I was happy with

my times, but I wanted to go faster. It’s OK though because there

is still a lot of time left in the season to improve. I was really

proud of everybody because practice has been hard so the team

deserved to do well.”

Other wins came from sophomore Laura Tingle who won the 100

butterfly in a time of 1:00.81, her best time of the season. Junior

diver Kara Crisp won both of the 1- and 3-meter diving events, and

sophomore Kara Swindler won the 100 breaststroke in a time of

1:11.22.

The Rams’ 200 medley relay crushed their competition with a time

of 1:53.69. Teaming up for that win were sophomores Cassi Willbanks

and Kara Swindler, along with juniors Shelley Aspevig and Seda

Odzemir.

The 200 free relay, composed of Aspevig, Willbanks, freshman

Jackie Palmero and Tingle, won in a blazing time of 1:44.62.

The team looked impressive by sweeping five of the 13 events

(the 50, 100, 200, 500 freestyle and 100 backstroke.).

“These kids that normally don’t get this opportunity really

stepped up today,” Mattos said. “They really didn’t know how

difficult this meet was going to be, but they raced really well.

This meet was a great confidence booster without question.”

The Ram’s look to carry their dominance into their next meet,

the New Mexico Invite on Nov. 7 at 5 p.m. They will get a chance to

show the rest of the Mountain West Conference what they are made

of.