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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

sports

Freshmen hope to fill void left by 2012 class

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a Big Ten and NCAA Champion swimming program.

IU Coach Ray Looze said this year’s group of freshmen have had no choice but to step up, with the loss of a huge, successful senior class last year, including French Olympian Margaux Farrell, 2011 Team USA member Allysa Vavra, Brittany Strumbel, Laura Head, Katelyn Ishee, Kristen Mitsch, Courey Schaefer, Kim Tracey and Nikki White.

Two leading ladies, Brooklyn Snodgrass and Haley Lips have done exactly that for the Hoosier women’s team by establishing themselves as pivotal point scorers this season.

Along with Alexis Bullard, Shelby Carroll, Siri Kristiansen, Allie Lamberson, Sarah Lewis, Madeline Maher, Taylor O’Brien and Rachel Thompson, the freshmen class has contributed to the IU victories that have helped maintain the high level of performance last year’s senior class produced.

“I think we are better with the addition of this freshmen class, and I think we have a chance to be a better team because these freshmen girls are swimming like they are veterans,” Looze said. “The girls that we graduated last year, we took really several years to develop them.”

Heading into the 2012-13 season, IU’s swimming and diving team lost three of the team’s major point contributors.

At the 2012 Big Ten Championships, Vavra, Strumbel and Farrell combined to score 235 out of the team’s 651-point total, more than one-third of the team’s production.

Vavra also scored 36 points individually at the 2012 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. Farrell went on to earn a bronze medal as part of the 4x200-meter freestyle relay team at the 2012 London Olympics.

Snodgrass has already achieved several merits, earning the Big Ten Swimmer and Freshman of the Week after her victories in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke events in the double-dual meet against Texas and Michigan.

With times of 53.20 and 1:53.97, the Canadian native currently has the best times in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke, respectively, in the Big Ten conference.

At the 2012 AT&T Winter National Championships on Saturday, Snodgrass earned a top-five finish in the 200-yard backstroke.

“To get in there and make an A final unshaved is a real nice feather in the cap for anybody, whether they be upperclassmen or freshmen,” Looze said.

Ranked third in the conference in the 200-yard butterfly and in the top 20 in three other events, Lips has also added to the Hoosiers’ depth.

“The atmosphere is great, and it is nice to have people around me to push me to be the best I can be,” Lips said.

Out of the first three intercollegiate meets Snodgrass and Lips have swum in, they have finished outside of the top five in individual events on only a combined three occasions.

“The fact that they can be impactful at the NCAA level their freshman year gives me a lot of reason for optimism,” Looze said. “We are still a rebuilding team, but there is a lot of promise on the horizon.”

For the women’s distance group, O’Brien has been influential so far this season.

Currently, O’Brien has a Big Ten top time in the 1650-yard freestyle with a time of 16:28.58, as well as the seventh top time in the 1000-yard freestyle at a time of 9:59.78 and 14th in the 500 free with a time of 4:49.12.

With a time of 1:02.98 in the 100 breaststroke, Maher currently has the 15th top time in the conference and the sixth top time in the 200 breaststroke.

Although the freshman squad is already performing at a high level at double-dual meets and nationals, Looze said the most important time for them to perform will be at the Big Tens and NCAAs.

The freshmen are on the right track to represent the Hoosier swimming program by the end of the season, but there are a few training for more individually-oriented meets.

Snodgrass will be competing at the World Championship Trials for Canada after the Big Ten Championships and the NCAA meet.
 
Both Snodgrass and Lips, combined with the other members of the 2012-13 freshmen group, have already scored major points for the IU swim team and hope to continue to make an impact.

“Athletics is such a fluid endeavor that it’s hard to predict the future, but if they stay consistent and have a clear, steady approach and don’t let their emotions get too low or too high, really good things can happen for them in the future,” Looze said.

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