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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

sports

IU finishes 2nd at Big Ten Championships, Vavra garners award

With only two events to go in the Big Ten Championships, the IU women’s swimming and diving team had its closest deficit from first-place Minnesota since Wednesday, the first day of the competition.

As the Hoosiers trailed by only 4.5 points after the 200-yard butterfly and started the day 40 points behind, the team had an opportunity to get its first lead of the entire meet and, in turn, earn its fourth-consecutive Big Ten title.

The platform dive and 400-yard freestyle relay were the only events remaining.

Unfortunately for IU, that magical comeback never came as the Gophers sealed their fourth Big Ten title in the final event of the championships, beating the Hoosiers by a 680.4-651 margin.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had a team under more pressure than this group was under,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “To be as down by as many as we were going into the last day, to rally the way we did. I don’t know if I’ve ever been prouder of a group.

“Even though we fell short of winning the championship, more was achieved by overcoming adversity, by not giving up and by finding a way to break through when everyone was counting us out.”

The Hoosiers’ overall performance was led by senior swimmer Allysa Vavra, who set three school records during the four-day meet and earned the Swimmer of the Championships award.

Vavra’s most notable performance came in the 400-yard individual medley, in which her time of 4:01.41 in the finals not only set the school and Big Ten records by nearly a three-second margin, but was also the third-fastest of any collegiate swimmer this season and the 15th-fastest ever recorded.

“The time is really good, but I am still looking to go faster at NCAAs,” Vavra said. “The 400 IM is my best, so I am comfortable and used to performing at a high level. I know what I am capable of, so I just used it to my advantage. Hopefully, at NCAAs I can go under four minutes.”

Vavra also set the school record in the 200-yard individual medley twice Thursday — once in preliminaries and again in the finals.

Her final time of 1:55.44 was only 0.03 seconds shy of the conference record, but was good enough for the Big Ten Championships meet record and an NCAA A Cut qualifying mark.

On Saturday, in a third-place finish in the 200-yard breaststroke finals, Vavra broke her own school record with a time of 2:08.79, also an NCAA A Cut qualifying time.

“I’m not really surprised that I swam well un-tapered,” Vavra said. “I know I am capable of swimming fast tired, and I think it just comes down to being confident in yourself and trusting your training. I also have been to this meet before and knew what to expect of myself, so I just tried my hardest, and if that resulted in best times, then that’s even better.”

IU also set a Big Ten record in the second event of the entire meet in the 800-yard freestyle relay.

The team of seniors Brittany Strumbel, Margaux Farrell and Nikki White along with sophomore Lindsay Vrooman combined for a first-place time of 7:00.82, an NCAA A Cut qualifying mark, and the second-fastest of any team in the country this season.

“It was exciting to set that record and show that we are a presence in that relay,” Farrell said. “Hopefully, we will get to showcase what we’re capable of on the national scene at Auburn at NCAAs.”

Vrooman provided the only other win for the Hoosiers during the meet by winning the 1,650-yard freestyle Saturday with a time of 16:00.44, the third-fastest in school history and her first career individual Big Ten title.

In all three diving events, senior Gabby Agostino came up big for the Hoosiers by finishing in the top eight. Agsotino finished fourth in the 1-meter, third in the 3-meter and sixth in the platform, carrying the team on her back while two of IU’s top divers, junior Amy Cozad and sophomore Laura Ryan, were not in attendance for the meet.

The duo is currently in London preparing for the synchronized diving competition at next week’s FINA Diving World Cup.

“I think our diving team fought hard through this competition,” Agostino said. “Half of the divers that went to the meet were injured and hadn’t been training. They stepped up for the team and dove the best they could.”

Despite never holding the lead, the Hoosiers went from being in third place after day two to second after day three, only 40 points behind Minnesota.

After the Hoosiers trimmed the deficit to 4.5 points, the closest they had been since the 800-yard freestyle relay, Minnesota extended the lead to 23.5 points after having three top-16 finishers in the platform dive, compared to IU’s one.

Coming down to the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, the Hoosiers actually had an opportunity to win it all.

Had Minnesota finished seventh or worse, and had the Hoosiers won the event, Indiana would have been crowned Big Ten champions for the fourth consecutive time.

That hope never came to fruition, as the Hoosiers finished in sixth and the Gophers in third.

“I thought that, after the prelims yesterday, we had a chance,” Looze said. “I thought we put ourselves in position, and we needed the mile and the platform to go well to finish it off. We got within four points before the platform, but they extended the lead, and at that point there was just not enough points to close the gap. We had to be perfect to win, but we did what we could do with the players we had available.”

Though the season is over for some, the team will start training today for the NCAA Championships, which will take place from March 15 to 17 in Auburn, Ala.

This past year, the Hoosiers finished in 15th place, and the team will try to improve this year.

“There’s always something that you can look back on, that you could have done better, whether that be from the coaches, swimmers or divers, so we’ll go back to the drawing board to try to get it right,” Looze said.

“I think we’ve got a real good team moving into the NCAAs, and our goal now is to finish as high as we have in our history. I think we’ve got a good enough team to be able to do that.”

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