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(02/17/12 5:33am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Despite another record-setting day at the Big Ten Championships, Indiana’s women’s swimming and diving team has a lot of work to do if it wants a fourth consecutive Big Ten title.Though IU won three of the four preliminaries held earlier in the day, the Hoosiers were only able to garner one victory in the finals out of the five races, leaving the Hoosiers in third place with 203 points, trailing first place Minnesota by 32 points and second place Ohio State by 19. Senior swimmer Allysa Vavra set the school record in the 200-yard Individual Medley on Thursday not once, but twice. In the preliminaries, Vavra finished her heat with a time of 1:56.36, beating her career-best and school record time of 1:56.80, set at the Georgia Invitational earlier this season. Thursday night, during her finals heat, Vavra not only set the school record, but the Big Ten record by finishing with a time of 1:55.44, winning the race as well. Vavra’s time was also good for an NCAA A-Cut Qualifying Time.After sophomore Lindsay Vrooman won the preliminaries in the 500-yard freestyle race, Vrooman ended up finishing in second in the finals heat with a time of 4:39.64, her career-best time. For senior Brittany Strumbel, her third-place finish in preliminaries was followed by a fourth-place ending in the finals heat, finishing with a time of 4:41.57, good for an NCAA B-Cut qualifying time. IU’s surprise finisher though was from freshman Lauren Jordan, who posted the fifth-fastest time in the finals with a time of 4:41.86, her career best by nearly a four second margin. However, Jordan competed in the consolation heat, meaning that her time actually earned a ninth-place finish. In the 1-meter diving competition, despite senior Gabby Agostino winning the preliminaries and leading with two rounds to go in the finals, Ohio State senior Bianca Alvarez posted two huge scores of 67.6 and 66.3 to defeat Agostino and take the Big Ten title. In fact, Agostino ended in fourth place with a score of 331.15, still good for a career-best mark. Sophomore Kate Hillman finished in eighth in the competition, senior Christina Kouklakis in 11th and freshman Kathryn Connolly in 15th. The 50-yard freestyle and 200-yard freestyle relay were not very favorable for the Hoosiers, however. Senior Margaux Farrell was the highest finisher for IU in the 50-yard free with a time of 23.00, good for 12th place overall, and in the 200-yard free relay, the Hoosiers finished in sixth despite earning the third fastest time in school history (1:30.85). That race was swam by seniors Margaux Farrell and Brittany Strumbel, sophomore Stephanie Armstrong and freshman Justine Ress. The Hoosiers will get their next opportunity to earn points tomorrow in seven events, including the 400-yard medley relay, the 100 fly, breast and back, the 200 free and the 3-meter dive. The action will begin at noon EST with preliminaries, and finals will begin starting at 7:30 p.m. EST.
(02/16/12 4:29am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Before taking to the pool Wednesday for the first day of the Big Ten Championships, senior Margaux Farrell said the IU women’s swimming and diving team would be dedicating the championship meet to teammate Sara Delay, who is no longer able to swim due to illness.When the team entered the pool in the Campus Wellness and Recreation Center at the University of Iowa on Wednesday, the Hoosiers came out impassioned and ended the first day of competition in second place with one win out of two races, only four points behind leading Wisconsin.IU’s lone win came in the 800-yard freestyle relay, when the team of seniors Brittany Strumbel, Farrell and Nikki White and sophomore Lindsay Vrooman finished in a record-setting time of 7:00.82. Not only did the four set the pool record, their NCAA A cut qualifying time also set the Big Ten Championships record, the IU record and the Big Ten record. The Hoosiers’ time of 7:00.82 was also more than two seconds faster than their closest competition, a 7:02.97 time from Minnesota.In the first event of the day, however, the Hoosiers earned a fifth-place finish in the 200-yard medley relay in a time of 1:38.74, swum by senior Kim Tracey, junior Ashley Specht, sophomore Stephanie Armstrong and freshman Allie Day. Though the group finished in fifth in a race during which a pool record was set by first-place Wisconsin, the time was still good for the third fastest in IU history.The Hoosiers are in second place with 68 points through the first two races, and they have the opportunity to earn points in five races today. Action will resume starting at noon, with the 500-yard freestyle, 200-yard individual medley, 50-yard freestyle and 1-meter dive preliminaries all taking place. The finals for those events, plus the 200-yard freestyle relay, will take place beginning at 7:30 p.m. EST.
(02/15/12 4:11am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>After months of preparation through daily workouts and meets against top-tier competition, Indiana’s women’s swimming and diving team is about to be put to the ultimate test.The team has won three consecutive Big Ten titles and four in the past five years, and now the Hoosiers have another opportunity this week to improve their standing in the Big Ten.Starting Wednesday, the women’s swimming and diving team will compete in the four-day Big Ten Championships in Iowa City, Iowa, as the Hoosiers go for their fourth consecutive conference championship en route to the NCAA Championship Meet in March.“The target has been on our back every year,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “We expect that there are going to be several teams that are going to be coming out swinging, but I just want (our team) to be persistent and tough.”This meet presents a special opportunity for IU’s seniors. The seniors have the chance to sweep the Big Ten Championships all four years they swim and dive at IU. As they head into the meet, senior swimmer Margaux Farrell said, they are well aware of the potential feat.“I think there is pressure on the senior class, but not so much that it will hinder us,” Farrell said. “We are excited to see if we can complete a perfect career, but regardless of what happens, we’ve had some great times together as a class and, more importantly, as a team. I’m sure whatever happens will happen for a reason.”Though the Hoosiers are the No. 1 Big Ten team and No. 12 in the nation, according to the CollegeSwimming.com/CSCAA Coaches Poll, a fourth consecutive Big Ten title will not be handed to them. This season, five other Big Ten teams are ranked in the Top 25, meaning the Hoosiers will swim and dive against some of the best competition in the nation. “All we can control is ourselves,” Looze said. “The divers have their job to do and the swimmers have their job to do, and we have to come together as a team and realize that, session by session, it’s going to be a battle.”Though Looze said the target is on IU’s back, he also said the team’s attitude heading into Iowa City is exactly what it needs to be to win the title. “The girls in the past several weeks have been loose, have smiled a lot and have been joking around, so they have the demeanor that you want to see,” Looze said. “We constantly remind them the reason we put in so much hard work is so we can have fun at this time of the year, so that’s what we intend to do.”Once the Hoosiers take their first dive into the pool at the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center at the University of Iowa, it will all boil down to how fast they swim and how well they dive. Looze said that, if IU performs well, then no matter the result, he will be happy with the team’s effort.“You know, there is nothing more we can do,” Looze said. “I feel confident that we put in the work and that we’ve done everything we can do.“All I want for the girls is that they have a great meet, that they swim well and up to their capability, and if they do that, we can walk away with our heads held high.”
(02/08/12 4:39am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>On any given late afternoon at the Counsilman/Billingsley Aquatic Center, the first thing one will notice upon walking in is not the distinct smell of chlorine commonly associated with pools. Instead, the powerful sound of dozens of swimmers pounding through the pool and the booms of divers jumping on and off the board stand out.On this particular Tuesday practice, the IU swimming and diving team is only weeks away from the Big Ten Championships — for the women, only one week remains, and for the men, two. Both teams are well into tapers. However, to the unknowing eye, it looks as if they’re training with maximum effort.Today, though, is just another day of what IU swimmers have to go through, what the swimmers call one of the toughest daily workout regimens of all sports.“We are pretty much continuously training,” senior swimmer Margaux Farrell said. “I would say that, for 90 percent of our time spent in the pool, we are moving. There is not a lot of ‘wall’ time or time spent taking breaks. We go through set after set until the workout is complete.”Senior swimmer Allysa Vavra said she knows exactly what Farrell means. For Vavra, who is a bronze medalist at the 2011 Pan American Games, one of her weekly workouts consists of swimming 3,000 yards and more than one mile in warm-ups alone, which is followed by 30 laps of 100-yard swims that are required to take fewer than 60 seconds. All IU distance swimmers go through a similar workout a staggering 10 times a week and are in the weight room four times per week.“I think swimming is one of the hardest sports because not everyone can do it. It is mentally and physically demanding, and we practice a ridiculous amount,” Vavra said. “I think people don’t realize what we do sometimes, but I think they should try jumping in and doing the set I talked about before. It sounds easy, but most people can’t even make a 100 in under two minutes.”For both the men’s and women’s teams, all this hard work is put toward winning a Big Ten title. The women have won the Big Ten Championship three straight seasons and four of the last five, and the men are looking to win their first since the 2005-06 season. For most swimmers and divers, that title is the pinnacle of competition, and after months of hard work, it is finally within reach.“It is this level of mental and physical training that I feel makes us prepared to be successful at our championship meets,” Farrell said. “Championship meets are long, stressful and trying on your body. You have to have a strong endurance base, and you must be mentally able to handle to competition as well. Personally, at Big Tens, I have to swim 10 races, and at NCAA’s, this number can be even higher because relays are swum at both prelims and finals.”While swimmers work on their endurance and speed, on the other side of the CBAC, divers continue to work toward perfection. Multiple rounds of diving repetition follow long periods of stretching as divers work toward mastering dives by competition time.“Diving is very mentally demanding,” junior diver Zac Nees said. “There is constant movement in diving, but the real stress is on the mind. We are diving constantly and doing different types of dives every time, so there are so many things we have to think about in order to strive for perfection.”At 5 p.m., the swimmers come out of the water, the divers move from the boards and the team retreats to the locker rooms with smiles of relief on their faces. Practice is finished, but only for today. Tomorrow, an equally challenging routine will follow.“Swimming and diving are very much mental sports, and you can will yourself to achieve or not achieve your goals,” Farrell said. “You need to be tough going into a meet setting to tell yourself that no matter what, you’ve trained for this. When you think about it, practice is so much more grueling and intense, and competitions are actually just the fun part to let all your hard work shine.”
(01/30/12 4:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Senior Margaux Farrell said she knew she would be emotional during her final meet as an IU swimmer at the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatic Center heading into the final dual meet of the season Saturday.With the Hoosiers taking on a highly touted Louisville team, the women ranked No. 24 and the men ranked No. 12, securing wins Saturday afternoon was not going to be an easy task.Led by performances from IU’s seniors and underclassmen, the No. 12 women’s team defeated the Cardinals 165-128, while the No. 11 men fell by a 165.5-134.5 margin. On the women’s side, Farrell and senior Allysa Vavra dominated in their final dual meet. The two combined earned six overall wins. Though the Hoosiers’ seniors provided multiple wins, IU also saw victories from sophomores Lindsay Vrooman and Laura Ryan and from freshmen Justine Ress and Allie Day.“The whole meet was fun to watch,” Vrooman said. “I really think our freshmen class is going to make a name for themselves as the years go by, and having them with the great talent of our senior class is great. It’s awesome to see people winning events and putting up great times in every class.”Farrell won three events for the second time in a row including last week’s meet against Purdue, winning the 200-yard freestyle by a three-second margin (1:48.49), the 50-yard freestyle (23.53) and the 200-yard medley relay (1:42.56), during which she led the Hoosiers in the last leg of the race. Meanwhile, Vavra earned victories in the 200-yard butterfly (1:58.05), 200-yard breastroke (2:14.02) and 400-yard individual medley (4:12.25), which she won by a wide, 5-second margin. “I would say that the meet went really well,” Farrell said. “Everyone came in with a great attitude, and we really fought hard from beginning to end. It was a really nice win to go out on.”Meanwhile, Vrooman provided the Hoosiers with key distance-event victories, as she took both the 500- and 1,000-yard freestyle wins. In the 1,000 freestyle, Vrooman’s time of 9:51.49 was nearly 12 seconds faster than Louisville’s second-place finisher. In the 500 freestyle, she edged IU senior Brittany Strumbel to win the event with a time of 4:50.92, only .19 seconds better than her teammate. Vrooman’s total swimming distance on the day was equivalent to 30 feet shy of a mile.“Placing first in the freestyle events was a nice confidence boost, I’ll have to admit, but I was happier about maintaining my speed and endurance as the meet went on,” Vrooman said. “I think that was a little bit more pivotal for me — knowing that I could compete consistently well in all my events today.”Finally, the Hoosiers rounded out the day’s performance with victories by Day in the 200-yard medley relay and the 100-yard backstroke (55.54), while Ress won in the 200-yard medley relay, as well, and the 200-yard backstroke (2:00.57). Freshman Dorina Szekeres swam the 200-yard backstroke as an exhibition, and had she swam in the actual race, she would have won. “The freshmen always bring their A-game to meets,” Vrooman said. “They’re all just great teammates.”On the men’s side, the Hoosiers struggled to achieve wins in the pool, as the Hoosiers only won four events outside of the diving competition. Andrew Taylor won the 1000-yard freestyle with a time of 9:20.21, and John Schnittker won the 500-yard freestyle in 4:29.61.However, in diving, junior Zac Nees swept both events for his sixth and seventh wins this season, as the Hoosiers went 1-2-3 in both dives to give them a chance at a comeback in the overall meet. The Cardinals won 10 of the 14 swimming events to prevent any comeback.“We just didn’t get the job done, and we’re better than that,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “We swam better last week than we did this week, so we’ve just got to know that we’re a better team than that and know that we just didn’t show up like we’re capable of.”Though the men will be participating in the Ohio State Winter Invite from Feb. 11-12, the next women’s meet will be the Big Ten Championships from Feb. 15-18. For them, the team will be going for its fourth consecutive Big Ten title.“Almost all of the team will be tapered and ready to go, so hopefully we will be able to win the meet again,” Vavra said. “I think that everyone will have to step up and do their part, and if that falls into place, then the meet will go the way we want it to.”
(01/27/12 5:48am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Fresh off its sweep last Saturday against Purdue on live television, the IU men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams face yet another tough challenge. In their second home meet of the year, the Hoosiers will swim against Louisville on Saturday at the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatic Center. This season, the Cardinals boast a men’s team ranked No. 12 in the nation and a women’s team ranked No. 24. With this being the last dual meet of the season, IU Coach Ray Looze said they cannot overlook the Louisville squad.“Louisville is a really, really good team,” Looze said. “I think they’re a pretty similar team to us, and they heavily invest in swimming, as you can tell from where they are in the national rankings, so we’re going to have to be really sharp if we’re going to walk away on the positive end of the equation.”For the No. 11 men’s team, last Saturday’s meet against Purdue was a wake-up call. Though the Hoosiers began with a significant lead against the Boilermakers, Purdue came back. The Hoosiers ended the meet with a 32-point victory. For Indiana, making sure Louisville does not stage a comeback will be important. To ensure that, the swimmers and divers will have to compete at a very high level, said IU junior diver Zac Nees.“Going into the meet, we knew Purdue was stronger toward the middle of the meet, so our strategy was to get out to an early lead and try to hold that lead throughout the rest of the meet,” Nees said. “As for Louisville, I am not sure about all the swimming events, but diving’s goal is to get another 1-2-3 finish on 1-meter and 1-2-3-4 finish on 3-meter in order to help ease the pressure on the swimmers.”After Saturday’s 169-130 victory against Purdue — though it was actually 201-99 before exhibitioning events changed the results — IU’s women’s team finally seemed to be back on track after a three-point loss at Michigan. Facing a Louisville team that has lost only one dual meet all season, though senior Margaux Farrell said the Hoosiers will have to swim at a high level to beat Louisville, despite yet another intense week of practice.“This is going to be just another one of those meets where we have to buckle down and try to swim fast while being tired,” Farrell said. “We literally never rest for dual meets, and we obviously always want to win, but we will not sacrifice training for Big Ten’s and NCAA’s in order to do so.”After Saturday’s meet, the men will be off for two weeks until the Ohio State Winter Invitational. The team will participate in the Big Ten Championships only a week and a half after that. Though it is still nearly a month away, the looming competition is fresh in the Hoosiers’ minds. For now, though, it’s Saturday’s meet against the Louisville squad that is the team’s true priority, Looze said. “We’re definitely focused on the Big Ten’s — we always are — but Louisville is one of the best dual meet teams in the country,” Looze said. “We’re going to have to be at our best, there’s no doubt about it. We’re just going to go toe-to toe with them, and it’s going to be a street fight. That’s what we’re expecting.”
(01/23/12 4:34am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Jan. 21, 2012, will be a day that will live forever in Indiana swimming and diving history.Under the lights, in the first live swimming and diving broadcast ever on the Big Ten Network, the IU men’s and women’s teams were pitted against rival Purdue.It was a battle for bragging rights and Crimson and Gold Cup points. It was also senior day. The Hoosiers did not disappoint. Led by a slew of top finishes, the No. 10 IU men defeated the No. 20 Boilermakers 166-134. The No. 8 IU women did the same, winning 169-130 against the No. 18 Boilers. “I thought we did a fantastic job today of getting off to a fast start,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “This team does its best when the spotlight is on them, and today was a great example of that. We are tired as a team, but they competed real hard today.”The Hoosier men fought off a resilient Purdue team en route to victory and saw record results in the process. With three 1-2-3 finishes and nine wins during the 16 events of the day, the Hoosiers relied on early swimming results to take the lead. IU’s 400 yard medley relay team of junior Jim Barbiere, sophomores James Wells and Cody Miller and freshman Steve Schmuhl led the Hoosiers to its first win of the day. Then, in the next event, sophomore Patrick Scally won his first career race, taking the 1,000 yard freestyle in a time of 9:20.39 against IU’s Ryan Hinshaw. The Hoosiers then followed with two more straight wins and built a strong enough lead to withstand a Purdue run.“It was pivotal for our men to get off to a fast start,” Looze said. “We knew that Purdue would make a run toward the middle of the meet, so I’m glad that we were able to get enough points early on when we needed them.”The diving portion of the meet, in which IU went 1-2-3 in both the platform and the 1-meter dive, sealed IU’s victory against Purdue on Saturday. While sophomore Conor Murphy won his first career event in the platform dive, the real headlines surrounded junior Zac Nees’ six-dive performance in the 1-meter competition.On six dives, Nees compiled a score of 420.90, the highest collegiate score ever recorded at the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatic Center, and the second-highest score in Indiana diving history. After winning only one event in his prior two seasons, Saturday’s win was his fifth this season. “I am extremely proud of what Zac has done this season,” Looze said. “Jeff (Huber, the IU diving coach) has told me that he is one of the most talented divers he has ever coached. “It was only a matter of time he would have a performance like this, and hopefully, he can stay consistent.”On the women’s side, IU dominated the meet with five 1-2-3 finishes, having won 201-99 before exhibitioning results to trim the score to a more respectable 166-134. In her first meet of the season, junior Amy Cozad won the women’s platform dive with a score of 354.53, beating teammate and U.S. Synchronized Diving partner sophomore Laura Ryan in the process. In the swimming portion of the competition, seniors Margaux Farrell and Allysa Vavra dominated, posting strong senior day results in front of their families. Farrell was a winner in the 200-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle and 400-yard freestyle relay. She finished 0.38 seconds away from a four-event sweep, earning second place in the 50-yard freestyle. For Vavra, she was also a uthree-event winner on a day where the national spotlight was on the Hoosiers. She breezed to a 1,000-yard freestyle victory by a four-second margin. She then followed it up with wins in the 200-yard breaststroke and the 200-yard individual medley, which was later exhibitioned. “I would obviously say that it was a great feeling to win in front of our family and friends, especially since it was our senior meet and the first ever live broadcast of a dual,” Farrell said. “But the real thing that made us happy about the win was that we had no rest coming in after a really intense workout on Friday.”Saturday’s women’s win against Purdue was the Hoosiers’ way of avenging this past year’s 161-139 dual meet loss to the Boilermakers. It also gave IU the 4.0 to 3.5 lead in the Crimson and Gold Cup. Most notably, a national audience saw the Hoosiers take the sweep against their in-state rival.“I’ve got to say, it was an amazing feeling to beat our rival school on live TV,” Nees said. “It was a great team effort, and I think everyone was pleased with the outcome.”
(01/20/12 3:54am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Saturday’s Indiana swimming and diving competition in Bloomington against in-state foe Purdue will be unlike any other dual meet in IU’s history.The real news surrounding this meet is not about the margin in the race for the Crimson and Gold Cup, nor is it about a meeting between two ranked programs, with Purdue’s men being ranked No. 20 and the women ranked No. 18.Rather, the true headlines about this meeting between the two rival programs revolve around the fact that the competition will be televised live on the Big Ten Network — the first time ever for any Big Ten swimming and diving event.“We think it is awesome and a great opportunity for our team that this meet will be televised,” IU junior diver Zac Nees said. “With the cameras on us, it will cause people to step up a little bit more and set some personal bests on the season. It may add a little pressure, but many of us have experience competing in these type of meets, so I think it will be an advantage to our team.”With the meet being the first swimming and diving event ever broadcast live on BTN, many steps were taken, both by IU and the network, to ensure this historic occasion will happen as planned.Every year, each Big Ten university has the option to choose two or three events (as decided by the network) to be telecast on BTN, and this year, IU had two. For one of those two events, IU elected in September to show the swimming and diving meet against Purdue, which is set to begin at 10 a.m. Saturday.“The fact that this meet is between Indiana and Purdue is huge, and that’s one of the reasons we chose this,” Assistant Athletic Director for Broadcast Services Jeremy Gray said. “It’s going to be a dual meet, it’s going to be men and women competing, and we have a great swimming history that we’re very proud of. The fact that we’re going to be able to broadcast this across the country where our alumni and our swimming parents from around the world will be able to watch it will be big. And with Crimson and Gold Cup points on the line, we think it’s huge.”Once the request was submitted to BTN, Senior Coordinating Producer Bob Lanning ran with it. Lanning, who organizes the broadcasts of 500 Big Ten sporting events during the academic year, said when he looked at Saturday’s broadcast schedule after receiving IU’s request, what he found surprised him.“We had a unique opportunity this weekend in that we didn’t have any live programming already scheduled on the network at the time of the competition,” Lanning said. “I got with our programming guys and said I would prefer to do this live. A Purdue/Indiana meet is what we would consider premier programming on the network, so from a network-scheduling standpoint, there were no issues for us.”After months of cooperation between the school and the network, the idea finally came to fruition within the past month, as the plans were officially made to broadcast the meet. The broadcast itself will start at 11:30 a.m. Saturday after the diving competition takes place. In addition, Lanning hired swimming and diving broadcasters Rowdy Gaines and Bernie Guenther. The diving analyst will be Cynthia Potter, an IU alumna and former Olympic diver, to call the live meet.“These two individuals bring a unique combination of broadcasting ability and knowledge about the sport to the table,” Lanning said. “For Cynthia to have been an IU alumna and having been around the Big Ten much of her career, she will be a great asset in addition to Rowdy’s broadcasting history and overall knowledge of the sport, having been a world class swimmer himself.”Though the camera lights will be on the Hoosiers at the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatics Center on Saturday, IU Coach Ray Looze said the team’s true focus will be on the pool.“We want to go hard and do the best we can for the University and all of Hoosier Nation,” Looze said. “Last year, the women got beat pretty bad, so I’ve got to think the women will be pretty motivated. On the men’s side, the meet came down to the last couple of events, too. There’s no easy meets when you’re Indiana. Everybody wants to beat us because it’s Indiana.”
(01/09/12 4:30am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The ResultIn their meet in Ann Arbor, Mich., this season and their first meet in more than a month, both IU men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams fell to Michigan on Saturday, with the men losing 166-130, and the women getting edged 151.5-148.5.The ActionWhen the men’s swimming and diving team traveled to Michigan two months ago in its double-dual meet involving IU, Michigan and Texas, the Hoosiers lost by an embarrassing 216-84 margin. This time around, although the margin of defeat was much closer, the No. 10-ranked Hoosiers found it hard to win events against the No. 4-ranked team in the nation. In the men’s first event of the day, the 200-yard medley relay, the team of junior Daniel Kanorr, sophomores James Wells and Cody Miller and freshman Steve Schmuhl took first place, and things were looking positive for the Hoosiers. After that race, IU won only one other swimming event, as Schmuhl won the 200-yard backstroke by a 2.28 second margin. IU’s lack of swimming victories was enough for Michigan to take the win, though junior Zac Nees won the 3-meter dive competition, and junior Mick Dell’Orco took first place in the 1-meter dive.The Hoosiers’ women’s swimming and diving team saw a promising performance, but the meet ended with a loss. Freshman Allie Day was the main story for the Hoosiers’ success, as she went on to win her first career events in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke races on the day. In addition to Day, senior Margaux Farrell continued to show her prowess in the pool, winning the 100- and 200-yard freestyle and 400-yard freestyle relay events. Farrell’s worst finish of the day was second place in the 50-yard freestyle, only .64 seconds behind the first place finisher. The Hoosiers also saw wins by senior Allysa Vavra in the 400-yard IM, sophomore Lindsay Vrooman in the 500-yard freestyle and senior Gabby Agostino in the 1-meter dive, but it was barely not enough against a resurgent No. 22 Michigan team. Key PlayIn the women’s 100-yard backstroke, Day defeated freshman Justine Ress by a .02 second margin to earn her first career collegiate victory.Notable NumberFive — The total number of events the men’s swimming and diving team has won against Michigan this entire season, out of 32 total events. Quote of Note“Michigan is really the class of the Big Ten this season,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “If anything, at this point, everyone is fighting to dethrone them, not us. We’re still in the process of preparing for the Big Ten Championships, and that is where we will get our revenge. For now, we just have to keep working hard like we have so far.”Up NextBoth the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams will have their first meet in Bloomington on Jan. 21 against Purdue. This season, the men’s team is ranked No. 20 in the nation, and the women’s team is ranked No. 18. The meet will also be telecast live on the Big Ten Network, with the action starting at 11 a.m.
(01/06/12 5:41am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>For the No. 10 IU men’s swimming and diving team, this weekend’s dual meet at No. 4 Michigan is about rebounding from an earlier loss. For the No. 8 women, this meet is all about not letting up after a previous victory against the same team.On Saturday, IU’s swimming and diving team will travel to Ann Arbor, Mich., for the second time this season and IU’s first meet in more than a month. Earlier in the season at the Nov. 4-5 double dual meet with IU, Michigan and Texas, the men’s team lost to the Wolverines by a score of 216-84 in its only third-place finish of the year. On Oct. 28, the women defeated the now No. 22 Wolverines 178-122.“This meet is going to be really important for us,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “For the women, we really want to improve on our depth and get a good gauge on where we stand on our relays, and on the men’s side, I feel there is a lot of unfinished business to take care of. We want to go in there and do a much better job than we did before.”The Hoosiers’ men’s team started the season with a 4-2 record, with its only losses of the season coming from the double dual meet with Michigan two months ago. The men thus far have enjoyed a breakout season by junior diver Zac Nees, who has won three of the six diving events he has participated in during the year, and they have shown a wide range of depth in the swimming pool. Junior Sam Trahin has won multiple 400-yard individual medleys this season, freshman Steve Schmuhl has specialized in the 200-yard backstroke and competed in both freestyle and butterfly races and sophomore Cody Miller has continued to contend for breaststroke titles. However, when IU traveled to Michigan this past November, the Hoosiers did not win a single event in the swimming competition. Looze said performing well and beating Michigan this time is a must.“I told our men that we’re going into this meet and the rest of the season with a blue-collar approach,” Looze said. “We want to go in there and be hard working and tough, and luckily we get this extra shot against them before the Big Ten Championships.”IU’s women’s swimming and diving team (3-3) meanwhile faces a different task in Saturday’s meet against Michigan. During October’s double dual meet against the Wolverines and Longhorns, IU beat Michigan by a margin of only 56 points. For a veteran Hoosiers team led by senior swimmers Allysa Vavra, Margaux Farrell and Brittany Strumbel, the Hoosiers are well aware of the potential letdown.“Michigan had a great first semester on the women’s side, but I don’t see us letting down against them,” Looze said. “I think we’re a better team than we were last time we raced them. Last time, they beat us in a few races that we should have won, but this time around, we should be able to rectify that.”
(12/09/11 5:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Editor’s note: Reporter Kamilla Benko interviewed Dorina Szekeres in English, and Szekeres responded in Hungarian. All quotes are translated by Benko back to English. Freshman Dorina Szekeres bounces on her toes before she steps onto the rough surface of the starting block in IU’s Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatic Center. Her hand checks to make sure her cap is snug before the 200-yard butterfly, then she lowers the red goggles onto her nose. The water ripples below her, and around her is the laughter of teammates and the echoing voice of Head Coach Ray Looze acting as announcer for the Cream vs. Crimson meet, a series of practice races between IU swimmers before their first competition of the NCAA season.“In the fourth lane all the way from Hungary, Dorrrrrrrrina Szekeressssssh!” Dorina smiles and shakes her head. Coach Looze is having too much fun rolling the r’s and emphasizing the Hungarian pronunciation of her name. “Swimmers, take your mark.” Deep breath in. The starting horn blasts. Dorina dives. ***Dorina first slid into the pool when she was 5. Her parents thought it was important for their kids to learn how to swim, and her older brother Peter was already enrolled in classes at the local pool in Zalaegerszeg, Hungary. She learned quickly and moved fast. When Peter stopped taking lessons, she kept going. For the next 13 years, her father woke up every morning at five, drove her to swim practice, then to school, then back to the pool. By the time she turned 18, Dorina had splashed in pools all over the world, including most of the European countries, Brazil, China and Qatar. But never America. So she was pleasantly surprised when Donny Brush, assistant head coach for the IU swim team, called after watching a tape of her 200-meter backstroke. Assistant Head Coach Mike Westphal said he thought she had a beautiful backstroke. She seemed to push herself harder than the others to get what she wanted — to be first.As Dorina reached the end of high school in Hungary, she was torn about her future. On the one hand, she loves Hungary. It’s her home. But Hungarian universities and high-level swim schedules don’t mix. Staying and swimming in Hungary would almost certainly mean she would have to be a swim coach when she stopped competing. “That’s not something I want to do for my ‘real’ life,” she said. On the other hand, going to America to swim and receive an education means traveling to a city 5,000 miles away. It means living on a campus where most students are unable to locate Hungary on a map. It means dedicating more time to a sport she does not always love. “Who loves getting up at 5 a.m. and jumping into a cold pool, swimming for two hours, going to class and then going back for another two hours of practice?” Dorina said. “You’d have to be crazy to love that. But it’s my life.” Swimming is not her passion — it’s her obsession. To be more precise, the Olympics are her obsession. “There wasn’t one moment when I was like, ‘I’m going to the Olympics,’” Dorina said. “But I started improving and I realized it was possible.” In 2010, she placed 15th at the European Championships in the 200-meter backstroke and first in the Hungarian Nationals for the same race. She won nationals again in 2011.In order to represent Hungary in the 2012 London Summer Olympics, she needs to swim the 200-meter backstroke in two minutes, 10 seconds. Right now, Dorina’s best time is 2:13. Three seconds — about the time it takes to read this sentence — separate her from a spot on the Hungarian Olympic team. Dorina could not justify walking away from 13 years of morning practices, of muscles screaming with fatigue, of time away from home. Not when she was this close. While holding her thumb and index finger a centimeter apart, she said: “If I have this much of a chance after all this work, then I will do everything to try.” In the middle of August, Dorina’s parents dropped her off at the Budapest Liszt Ferenc International Airport. The 18-year-old mulled over her decision on the flights from Budapest to Milano to Manhattan. She questioned herself as the plane landed in Indianapolis. Nearly 48-hours after her departure from Budapest, Dorina arrived in Bloomington. She looked at her 12-feet by 14-feet room, and thought, “I have to live here?” Too tired to think anymore, she climbed to the top bunk and fell asleep. *** The sound of palms slapping the water reverberates around the natatorium. “Dorina Szekeres is taking an early lead!” The announcer calls out as eight girls thrust themselves in and out of the water. Underneath the water, Dorina focuses on the movement of her body. Legs kick with arms. Feet point. Hips up. Elbows straight. Palms down. She counts the laps as she lunges through the water. Unlike a morning practice, her mind is totally focused on the moment. Now is not the time to think of her family at home. What her friends are up to. What she’s missing out on. “Dorina is playing a game of ‘catch-me-if-you-can’ ... she’s set a blistering pace ... annnnd Dorina in for the win!” When Dorina pulls herself out of the pool, she looks at the scoreboard. She raises her fists in the air and smiles. She’s never swum the 200-yard butterfly before. She only knows meters. *** The first few days were hard. Very hard. Jet-lagged and plopped in the middle of practice, she had difficulty understanding what was going on and what people were talking about. Even though American music is popular in Hungary and the English lyrics are played often (Dorina can rap the entirety of P.Diddy’s “I’ll Be Missing You”), following a conversation of native speakers is tough. “I understand more than I can speak,” she explains. “And it’s easier if it’s a one-on-one conversation. But in the locker room, it’s loud, and everyone talks so fast. That’s when it’s hard.” At the moment, Dorina is enrolled in Leadership Development, Finite Mathematics and Introduction to Psychology. She has told her teachers that English is not her first language, but she does the same work as everyone else. Yet there is a universal sign understood by all: the smile. “Whenever I see her, she’s smiling,” Coach Brush said. “Dorina came to IU at a disadvantage since she had never been here before or met the other recruits. But her personality is drawing people towards her. She’s a great listener — she has to be to take in what we’re saying, improve her swimming and adjust to a new life.” Language isn’t the only difference. Americans have the strange habit of serving bread with noodles and wearing slippers to class. Another idiosyncrasy: wet hair doesn’t bother Hoosiers. In Hungary, no one leaves the house with wet hair, swimmer or not. But because the girls don’t blow dry their hair after practice, Dorina doesn’t either. She says she wants to blend in with the team. So far, her coaches say she is doing just that. “There was one practice when I heard her teammate, Courey Schaefer, yell, ‘Let’s go, Do!’” Coach Brush said, pronouncing “Do” like “dough.” “I knew she was fitting in then.” In Zalaegerszeg, a small town with a small swim club, Dorina was the lone, outstanding talent for her team. The girl closest to her level was five years younger. Now Dorina trains with nine other Olympic hopefuls. But even in her most comfortable element where language doesn’t matter, Dorina battles culture shock. She has spent her whole life swimming in meters; she knows it takes 15 strokes to get to the wall in a 25-meter pool. But the pool at IU is 25-yards, 10 percent shorter. Dorina has no idea how many strokes she should aim for now. Pacing herself at the moment is like trying to relearn how to type on a keyboard if someone scrambled all the letters. There are also slight differences between American and European techniques — different hands are used to push off the wall, and strokes cut the water at a different angles. To adjust for this, the coaches invited Nemes, an adjunct professor for International Studies, to translate for Dorina’s first couple of individual practices. “I was just there to make sure the language didn’t get in the way of training,” Nemes said. He stayed for the entire practice, explaining English words for swimming and watching Dorina push to perfect herself. “After each lap, she would tell Donny (Brush) she had messed up on a turn, and she wanted to do it again. And again,” Nemes said. “She normally swims about 6,000 meters in an hour, but that day, she probably only did 300 meters because she was so focused on her technique.” “When I’m swimming, I have to think, ‘Now, which hand?’” Dorina said. “It’s small things that are hard to change after a lifetime. But I know it will make me a better swimmer,” she said. “At least, I hope.” ***“Go big D!” “Come on Dorrrrrrrrina!” Arms windmill in the pool as eight girls compete in the last race of the day: the 200-yard Individual Medley, a race that consists of the butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. Though Dorina can’t hear under water, her teammates cheer her on. Then —“Awwwww,” a moan ripples through the team. They wince. “She got caught on the turn,” one says to the other. Her pacing slightly off, Dorina slipped while kicking off the wall. But her lead has vanished. She kicks harder to make up for the mistake. Her fingers brush the wall and the race is over.Second. Coach Brush greets her at the edge of the pool. He tells her he’s proud of her and that she swam really well. She just needs to keep working on the turns, but he knows they are new to her. She’s done a great job all day. Dorina listens and nods. She’s not really disappointed, yet it bugs her when she doesn’t swim to her full potential. But she came to Indiana to learn. She left her family to improve.Dorina is ready to win.
(12/07/11 3:53am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Senior Allysa Vavra received the Big Ten Swimmer of the Week award Tuesday, days after her record-breaking Georgia Invitational.Last Friday, Vavra broke the school record in a third-place finish in the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 1:56.80, breaking her previous personal record.The next day, in the 400-yard individual medley, Vavra returned and raced a second-place 4:04.60, the third-best time in IU history. That finish also gave her sole possession of the top five times in the event in IU history. Vavra also automatically qualified for the 2012 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships in the event due to her finish in the race.Vavra is the first women’s swimmer at IU to win the Big Ten weekly honor since then-sophomore Taylor Wohrley on Jan. 11.
(12/06/11 3:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Junior diver Zac Nees hadn’t won an event since the platform dive at the 2009 Hoosierland Invitational. Now, he’s won three events in the past month.Despite swimming from age 6, Nees didn’t start diving until he was 14-years-old.“I got bored of it,” Nees said of swimming. “One summer, I tried out diving and instantly loved it and decided to further pursue it into my freshman year of high school.”By his senior year, Nees was the district and league champion in diving. During the 2009 Junior East National Championships, Nees won the 1-meter dive competition. Though he had other options, Nees found his true top choice at that meet.“Indiana decided to give me a shot when I won at the Junior East National Championships,” Nees said. “The last-minute discovery and the fact that I waited to decide until really late in my senior year almost made it feel like it was meant to be.”Nees said he knew his diving career would progress with the guidance of IU Diving Coach Jeff Huber, who has developed top talent for IU. His freshman year, Nees won the platform dive at a 2009 meet, his first collegiate victory. Nees didn’t win another dive that season or the next.“I never doubted my ability, and neither did Huber,” Nees said. “We really worked together on long-term success rather than putting a huge focus on winning dual meets.”That long-term preparation paid off Nov. 4 against No. 1 Michigan and No. 2 Texas, nearly two years after his previous victory. Nees won the 1-meter dive with a score of 408.95, his first career dual meet victory and the fourth-best score in IU history. Two weeks later, Nees swept both the 1- and 3-meter dives against No. 21 Virginia and Penn State and earned his first Big Ten Diver of the Week award of his career.“Zac has really matured in many ways,” Huber said. “I’m excited for him and his future performances.”Nees said his goals for the remainder of the season include qualifying for the 2012 Olympic Team Trials on the 3-meter springboard by placing in the top 12 of the event at the 2012 USA Diving Winter National Championships from Dec. 15 to 22. For now, Nees said there are still things to work on.“I feel like I am beginning to dive at the level I should be competing at, though I don’t think I am at my peak,” Nees said. “There is still a lot of room for improvement, and I hope to continue to get better as the season goes on.”
(12/05/11 5:07am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Senior Allysa Vavra led the way for a record-breaking weekend in Georgia.The No. 14 IU women’s and men’s swimming teams finished the three-day Georgia Invitational with top-five finishes.The women’s team took fourth place in the overall meet standings, ahead of No. 18 Virginia and second overall in swimming-only teams.Meanwhile, the men were led by wins from junior Sam Trahin and freshman Steve Schmuhl. The team finished fifth in the overall standings out of nine teams, only two points behind No. 21 Virginia.“We had a very good meet and saw a lot of swimmers get season-best and career-best times,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “Without our divers competing, I thought we did a fantastic job. That also made the scoring a bit deceiving.”Vavra broke the IU record for the 200-yard individual medley Friday with a time of 1:56.80. The next day, Vavra continued her hot streak, earning the third-fastest time in the 400-yard individual medley in IU history with a time of 4:04.60 in a second place finish. That result also gave her a feat that very few Hoosiers have ever done — earn the top five times in one event in school history at one time. “Getting the record this weekend was really unexpected,” Vavra said. “I went into this meet unrested after a tough week of training, so I thought I’d be tired going in. To be honest, though, having these records is cool, but I really hope to get faster times this season.”Vavra was not the only one who entered the record books for the IU women’s team this weekend — four other Hoosiers put their names in IU history. Senior Margaux Farrell earned the third and fifth all-time best times ever at IU in the 200-yard freestyle, racing a 1:44.47 in preliminaries, and 1:44.52 in the finals. That time was good enough for a third-place finish on the race. Seniors Brittany Strumbel, Courey Schaefer and Nikki White joined her in placing third in the 800-yard freestyle relay in a time of 7:06.97, good for the fifth-best time in Indiana history.“Our depth is starting to show and be apparent, which is fantastic,” Looze said. “That’s the way we build our teams at Indiana — with exceptional depth. We had more and more people in finals than in the recent past, and that’s what you have to do if you want to be a championship-level team.”The Hoosiers are now done for the 2011 portion of the season until IU takes on Michigan in a dual-meet on Jan. 7 in Ann Arbor, Mich. Right now, Looze said the the team will focus on training and continuing its preparation for the Big Ten and NCAA Championships.“We are getting there as a program, but there’s a lot to improve on,” Looze said. “We really have to come back this week, get caught up on our studies and get back into our intense workout routine. We also have to work hard over the holidays when nobody’s looking because that’s what great teams do.”
(12/01/11 5:42am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Juniors Eric Ress and Ryan Hinshaw will lead a small group of IU swimmers in the 2011 AT&T Winter National Championships today to Saturday in Atlanta. The championships are a lead-up event to the 2012 U.S. Olympic Team Trials June 25 to July 2 in Omaha, Neb. Swimmers who race at a qualifying time during the meet will be entered into the Olympic Trials competition. “It’s always a tremendous honor to be representing IU in these types of competitions,” IU Coach Ray Looze said. “With the athletes we have going trying to qualify for standards, I’m sure they’ll do a great job and come away representing IU successfully.”Other Hoosiers participating in the meet include junior Afton Robiertson and freshman Dorina Szekeres, the current Hungarian 200-meter backstroke champion. IU graduates Ben Hesen, Kevin Swander and Kate Fesenko will also participate in the meet. Ress will not represent IU in the competition, as he is sitting the season out to train for the French Olympic Trials.The remainder of the IU swimming and diving team will participate in the Georgia Invitational this weekend in Athens, Ga. That meet will pit the Hoosiers against, among other teams, the defending men’s and women’s national champions, California, and the women’s current No. 1 team, Georgia.
(12/01/11 5:39am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>They were born swimmers. They used concrete-filled coffee canisters for weight training, endured 5 a.m. practices and dominated their competition for three decades.IU’s historic success in men’s swimming is largely attributed to world-renowned former Coach Doc Counsilman, who led the team to six straight national championships.With the direction of current IU Coach Ray Looze, the legacy continues as members of the swim team travel to Atlanta for the USA Swimming Winter Nations today. But the swimmers from Doc’s era, which lasted from 1957 to 1991, know the real magic came from Doc’s wife Marge’s lasagna.Marge was a mom-away-from-home, showering the swimmers with unconditional love as they gathered around the family table, laughing and savoring forkfuls of rich marinara. Her undeniable influence on these swimmers — including my father, who swam for IU in the mid 1960s — is evident as they reflect on their time at IU and how Marge adopted them into the Counsilman family.Dec. 28 would have been Doc’s 91st birthday. He died from Parkinson’s disease in 2004. Now 87, Marge honors her husband daily at 7:30 a.m. as she glides through the glassy waters of the Monroe County YMCA pool. Swimming connects her to her husband.“He wasn’t perfect. No one is,” Marge said. “But I thought he was.” She said she lives to talk about Doc, about his passion, his dedication, his excellence. Beneath her crystal-blue eyes and soft smile, she is too humble to acknowledge her impact on Doc and the team.Marge grew up in Ohio, where baseball was the long-hailed sport, and knew nothing about swimming until she met Doc at the pool on the first day of summer after high school graduation. He kicked her out for eating a milk chocolate Clark bar but asked to court her a month later.“When I first met Doc, I didn’t quite know what to make of him,” Marge said. “He kicked me out of the pool. I didn’t know anything about swimming, competitions. I knew nothing about such an animal.”When they married in 1943, she quickly became immersed in the swimming world. After moving to several Midwest universities where Doc had coaching positions, they came to Bloomington in 1957 before Doc took the role as head coach in 1958.From 1957 to 1991, Counsilman’s team won 20 consecutive Big Ten Titles, won six consecutive NCAA championships and produced 47 Olympic medals.Coaches from around the world traveled to IU to watch practices, curious about the team’s “special sauce.” They were drawn to Doc’s use of underwater cameras and his invention of the swimming pace clock. What they didn’t see was Marge — supporting her husband’s new techniques, raising a family of four and acting as a motherly figure to hundreds of swimmers.“We were parents to them,” Marge said. “We would laugh at one another, and they felt like they could talk around us and give their opinion.”Jesse Steinfeldt, a professor of counseling and educational psychology at the IU School of Education, focuses on the psychological development of student athletes. Steinfeldt said he sees the coaching staff as playing a vital role in the athlete’s identity, having the potential to nurture values of togetherness and high self-esteem.“If the team atmosphere is one of respect and comfort, it can help the athlete in other aspects of their life,” Steinfeldt said. “Sports are the perfect laboratory to teach people interpersonal skills that can create a better lifestyle.”There wasn’t a swimmer on Doc’s team who did not visit the Counsilman home at least once. In fact, not a day passed without a few swimmers sitting at the dinner table. Sometimes Marge would stay up until 2 a.m. to help one of the swimmers finish an English paper.Chuck Richards, who swam for Doc from 1964 to 1967, left his home in the state of Washington to venture into the heart of the Midwest.“A lot of us, especially from my generation, started to head to Indiana from farther away places, and Marge played a bigger and bigger role in the lives of the swimmers,” Richards said. “She created a bit of a home away from home.”Other IU coaches’ wives did not want the pressure of inviting athletes into their homes. One day, when Marge invited a group of them to lunch, they confronted her.“They accosted me, telling me to quit,” Marge said. “But I told them, ‘I’m not. It works. I have a good time. They have a good time, so I’m not going to stop.'"And she never did.Marge recalled meeting future Olympian Mark Spitz for the first time, a somewhat shy teenager knocking on the door of her hotel room during a winter training trip to Florida in 1968. Marge remembered how Spitz’s father wanted the opposite of whatever his son desired, including a career as a TV star. As Spitz became comfortable with the Counsilman family, Doc and Marge were able to create a relaxed environment for the future nine-time Olympic gold medalist.Together, the husband-and-wife duo were at the forefront of the swimmers’ lives, encouraging an appreciation for classical music, comforting those who came up short in Olympic trials and teaching them the value of hard work by building pace clocks in their basement.While Marge might not have been at practices, she made it to every home meet, typed Doc’s manuscripts, ran the summer swim programs and had numerous gatherings at their home.“She was very much on the team,” Richards said. “She wasn’t just Doc’s wife. She was part of the crew.”Alan Somers, one of IU’s most decorated swimmers from the early ’60s, remembered Marge as a quiet but constant presence, a woman who made sacrifices to take care of her family while Doc was head coach.“The biggest thing Marge did was that she allowed Doc to do what he thought he needed to do,” Somers said. “She never made any demands that distracted him from his needs as a coach, but I also never detected any sense of martyrdom.”In 2004, Marge received the International Swimming Hall of Fame’s Grand Dame Award, which praised the “surrogate mother” of IU men’s swimming. In 2005, Somers also created the Marge Counsilman Swimming Scholarship as a tribute to her role in the program’s achievements.“I did it because I think she had as much to do with the success of the program in her own way,” Somers said. “All the swimmers know that.”Every year, Marge writes more than 200 Christmas cards to former swimmers who now live around the world.I remember receiving a Christmas card from her every December as I grew up. I yearned to listen to my father’s stories about Doc and Marge and how he found a sense of family in Bloomington with the Counsilmans. I laughed when he told me about flinging kickboards across the pool and wolfing down entire roasted chickens at the Cousilman table. One year, Marge sent him her lasagna recipe, which is safely nestled in my recipe-card box.When I came to IU from Portland, Ore., in 2008, my father had just passed away from a heart attack while doing what he loved most: swimming. When I arrived in Bloomington, Marge was there to ensure I felt at home, just as she was there for my father more than 40 years earlier.Her descriptions of my father as a “very handsome guy whom all of the ladies wanted to date” always makes me smile.Richards, who now lives in Oregon, still said he considers Marge a motherly figure. He calls Marge every few months and stops by her house first when he visits Bloomington. Living alone in a house filled with Doc’s collection of rare Audubon prints and black and white swim team photos, Marge is eager to visit and reminisce with any of Doc’s former swimmers.“Marge was the underpinning of what enabled the team’s excellence,” Richards said. “She was the meat and potatoes behind Doc and the team. She was a great person to talk to and provided a sense of home.”
(11/21/11 3:05am)
After being swept by No. 1 Michigan and No. 2 Texas earlier this month,
the men’s swimming and diving team returned to dominate the pool,
winning 13 of 18 events. The women’s team collected four wins during the two-day meet.
(11/18/11 5:16am)
Both the men’s and women’s teams will travel to State College, Pa., for a
double dual meet Friday and Saturday against Penn State and Virginia.
(11/15/11 2:46am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Now in his 23rd season as the head diving coach for the IU swimming and diving team, Jeff Huber has had a career that few others have attained.During his tenure at IU, Huber has led the Hoosiers to 13 U.S. Diving Combined Team National Championships and has coached divers to 72 All-American individual honors, five NCAA individual titles and 41 individual Big Ten titles.In addition to the success in the pool, Huber has been named the U.S. National Coach of the Year 11 times, was named Big Ten Coach of the Year 13 times and has been a coach on the U.S. Olympic diving team for the last three Olympiads. Most recently, Huber served as a member of the diving coaching staff for the United States during the 2011 Pan American Games.Huber, who dove at Wisconsin and graduated in 1975, said his career successes might never have happened if not for a volunteer coaching position at a community college in California.“I always knew I wanted to be a teacher, but I really decided on becoming a coach full-time after volunteering for two years at Cypress College in Southern California,” Huber said. “Before that, I actually planned to be an English teacher.”Before coming to IU, Huber coached divers at Nebraska for 11 years, where he won Big Eight Coach of the Year five times. He was also the coach for 27 Big Eight individual titles. Since coming to Bloomington, Huber said he cherished every moment as his career continued to bloom.“Being a Hoosier has meant being a part of a very special University and college town,” Huber said. “My wife is an assistant professor at IU. Our daughter graduated from IU, and our son is a senior at IU. We feel like we are a part of something special and really worthwhile here.”Huber has overseen the emergence of many divers during his career at IU, including Olympic gold medalist Mark Lenzi and NCAA Champions Christina Loukas, Kimiko Harai-Soldati and Cassandra Cardinell. He has also overseen national champion divers junior Amy Cozad, sophomore Laura Ryan and graduate Sara Reiling-Hildebrand.However, Huber said some of his greatest successes have come in the development of lesser-known divers, such as junior Zac Nees, who won his first career dual-meet event on the 1-meter springboard competition during the Nov. 4 meet against Michigan and Texas.“Seeing guys like Zac Nees coming into prominence is very intrinsically rewarding,” Huber said. “That is why I got into teaching. I have some very talented divers with big goals, and my challenge is to do my job correctly and help them reach their goals and see their dreams come true.”Huber said it is the untapped potential of such talent that keeps him coming back as he stays committed to bringing out the best in all of his athletes.“The biggest impact Coach Huber has had on me is to set goals and reflect on my progress toward everything I do,” Nees said. “He is also very good at having the staff working together to keep my outlook positive during competition, even after a missed dive.”Huber is now a member of the Indiana Swimming and Diving Wall of Fame and has coached divers from their first steps onto a college campus to the pinnacle of international competition.“All those accolades next to my name really do not mean much to me,” Huber said. “As I told my wife many years ago, if it is just about winning and medals, I don’t want to coach. Fame is fleeting, and medals tarnish. Character is forever.”
(11/07/11 5:03am)
The men’s swimming and diving team (2-2) went in to Ann Arbor, Mich.,
and lost against Michigan and Texas in a double-dual meet. The Hoosiers
fell to Michigan, 216-84 and lost to Texas 217.5-82.5.