Press Release courtesy of Cleveland State
The Cleveland State University men’s and women’s swimming & diving teams return to the pool this week as both squads compete in dual action for the first time.
CSU will compete at Xavier Thursday, Oct. 19, before facing Cincinnati the following afternoon. Competition will begin at 6:00 p.m. Thursday. Diving will commence at 1:30 p.m. Friday with swimming events following at 4:00 p.m. Live video will be available for the swimming portion of the dual at Cincinnati by clicking here.
Junior Jason van der Touw had an impressive debut as a Viking at the season-opening Justin Jennings Memorial Invitational and was subsequently honored as Horizon League Swimmer of the Week. Van der Touw won both the 100 and 200 freestyle at Colgate while also swimming on the winning 400 free relay team.
Freshman Dominik Niedzialek posted a trio of top-three individual finishes for CSU at its opening meet while fellow rookie Matt Akers swept the diving events.
Freshman Dana Bender grabbed an individual win in her first collegiate meet at Colgate by claiming the 200 backstroke. She also notched two other top-10 individual finishes at the meet. Sophomore Gabriella Marinelli had top-10 finishes in the 50 free, 100 free and 200 IM while junior Molly McNamara was among the top three in both the 100 IM and 100 back.
Thursday’s matchup will be the 16th meeting in dual format between the Vikings and Musketeers in the last 15 seasons. However, it will be the first time that CSU has competed at Xavier since 2005.
Amazingly, the Viking men have won each of their past 15 duals with Xavier. The CSU women have won six of their past eight against the Musketeers, including last year when Cleveland State swept Xavier in Cleveland. The Vikings won 20 of the 28 combined swimming events in last season’s matchup. Tyler Stevenson, Marinelli, McNamara and Claudia Zido all won two individual events against the Musketeers a season ago.
Cleveland State and Cincinnati have not competed against one another nearly as much. In fact, this will be only the second meeting in the past decade, as both CSU programs came up short at Cincinnati early in the 2015-16 season. MacJilton Lewis and McNamara won events in that dual with the Bearcats.
Cleveland State will resume action with its home opener on the first weekend of November. CSU will welcome Green Bay along with the Marshall women for two days of action.