After earning a Big Ten championship earlier this month, Indiana men’s swim and dive ended its season with a fourth-place finish at the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis on March 31.
The Hoosiers opened the meet with two sixth place finishes in relays March 27 The 200-meter medley squad (1:22.10) shaved seven hundredths of a second off its season best to post the second-best time in program history.
The 800-meter freestyle relay team (6:08.26) recorded its best time of the year, 2.6 seconds faster than the Big Ten Championships and good enough for the fourth best time in school history.
Also on Thursday, junior Rafael Miroslaw, the No. 20 seed in the 500-meter freestyle, finished eight spots higher than his initial seed in the preliminaries. Miroslaw cut 2.56 seconds off his seed time to post a 12th-place finish and a new career best time of 4:11.84.
Junior divers Carson Tyler and Quinn Henninger carried the bulk of the load for the Hoosiers on Thursday. They both finished top five in the 1-meter springboard preliminaries, with Henninger being the top qualifier (386.85). Tyler’s 367.05 points were good for a fifth-place finish in preliminaries.
Henninger and Tyler kept their momentums rolling into March 29 both medaling in the 1-meter springboard championships. Henninger’s score of 427.20 earned him the silver medal and was just 6.35 points short of first place.
“Quinn showed great composure all day,” IU head diving coach Drew Johansen said in a press release. “That final dive had a lot of pressure on it, and he delivered.”
Tyler recorded a score of 412.95, claiming the bronze medal, an impressive outcome considering it was his first time scoring in the 1-meter at the NCAAs.
But Tyler wasn’t done just yet.
On Saturday, Tyler and sophomore Maxwell Weinrich finished first (515.75) and second (450.70), respectively, in the final diving event of the competition, the platform diving finals. Already a Big Ten champion in the same event, Tyler repeats as the NCAA platform diving champion. Their one-two performance was enough to push the Hoosiers from fourth place up to third.
Miroslaw had a strong March 29 as well. After a personal best time in the 500-meter freestyle preliminaries, the 24th seed finished 14th in the finals with a time of 4:13.86. He also led off for the 16th-seeded 200-meter freestyle relay team, which finished 11th in the event with a time of 1:16.05, 15 hundredths of a second quicker than its previous season best.
Junior Luke Barr also performed better than his 15 seed in the 200-meter individual medley, notching a 10th-place finish despite matching his original seed time of 1:42.00.
Indiana’s seniors finished their careers on a high note. Brendan Burns wrapped up his collegiate career with a nice showing on the final day of the competition, finishing in seventh place in the 200-meter backstroke finals (1:38.62). He followed that performance with an eighth-place finish in the 200-meter butterfly (1:40.40).
Tomer Frankel went out on the highest of highs with two top-five finishes, coming in second in the 100-meter butterfly (43.85) and fourth in the 200-meter butterfly (1:39.35).
The team ends its season with an undefeated dual meet record, a Big Ten championship and a fourth-place finish in the NCAA National Championships after tallying 358 points, just two points behind Florida.
Indiana is one of four different programs to have top-six finishes in each of the last six years.
While the collegiate season is complete, the work does not stop for many of the American Hoosier swimmers. Olympic Trials will run from June 15-23 ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris this summer.
