You are working on Staging1

Day 1 Results at the ACC Championships Show Good Signs for Pitt Panthers Under New Coach

Braden Keith
by Braden Keith 10

February 14th, 2023 ACC, College, News

2023 ACC SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS

University of Pitt’s first year head coach Chase Kreitler has coached under some of the best in the country, having spent a few years with Eddie Reese at Texas followed by a more recent stint with the Cal Golden Bears and Dave Durden.

On the men’s side of the pool, those two programs are the top of the collegiate foot chain, period.

Kreitler walked into a tough situation at Pitt. Between transfers and retirement, the cupboard was left relatively-bare in the Trees Pool. There were some good bones there, they just needed the right coach to mold them to see better results.

Through one day of ACC Championship competition, it seems like they’ve found that coach.

Here’s a year-over-year comparison of day 1 results for Pitt.

2022 Time 2022 Place 2023 Time 2023 Place
Men’s 200 medley 8th 1:24.94 4th 1:23.98
Women’s 200 medley 9th 1:38.25 7th 1:36.68
Men’s 800 free relay 8th (+2DQs ahead of them) 6:25.76 8th 6:19.45
Women’s 800 free relay 11th 7:15.06 11th 7:21.52

They moved up places, and dropped big time, in three of their four relays. The exception was the women’s 800 free relay, where three of the four swimmers from last year’s relay (including two undergrads) are no longer on the roster; the 4th, last year’s anchor Jillian Berger, didn’t swim on this year’s relay.

The men’s 800 free relay dropped a whopping 6 seconds from last year, and here’s the stunning part: it’s the same four guys.

2022 Split 2023 split
Marcin Goraj 1:36.55 (LO) 1:34.65 (LO)
Wojciech Dutkowiak 1:35.66 1:35.43
Guy Frimis 1:37.66 1:35.10
Dominic Toledo Sanchez 1:35.89 1:34.27

That side-by-side comparison is pretty incredible. Marcin Goraj dropped almost two seconds by himself on the leadoff leg; Guy Frimis dropped two-and-a-half.

The Pitt men’s medley relay was actually relatively-complete from last year. Led by Cooper van der Laan, the breaststroker, they only had to replace the butterfly leg. The big drop there was from Krzyzstof Radziszewski, who split 21.38 on last year’s relay leadoff and 20.70 on this year’s relay leadoff. That tied him with the defending NCAA Champion in the 100 back, Kacper Stokowski of NC State, as the fastest split in the field.

Krietler’s last program, Cal, is the best men’s backstroking program in the country year-over-year, so maybe that huge jump in men’s backstroke shouldn’t be a surprise.

Senior Flynn Crisci on the anchor leg dropped a couple of tenths too.

The best finish for the Pitt men in a relay at last year’s ACC Championship was 8th place. In 2021, their best relay finish was 7th.

Their last finish as high as 4th place came in 2019, when their 200 free relay placed 4th at the ACC Championships, led off by Blaise Vera, who would eventually land 7th at the NCAA Championships in the 50 free as a senior.

The women’s 200 medley relay also dropped a second-and-a-half with mostly the same relay, though freshman Claire Jansen accounting for four-tenths of that over her counterpart.

The butterflier Sophie Yendell improve by seven tenths over last year, while breaststroker Tatum Detwiler and freestyler Kate Fuhrmann also improved by smaller amounts.

While the Panthers were nothing special in the regular season, Kreitler earned his stripes at a pair of programs that, more than most, are focused on that end-of-season result, so that’s probably not a surprise. Cal is especially that way, and while I’m sure he’d like for that to be NCAAs in the near future, for now that meet is the ACC Championships.

The Pitt Panthers have a long way to go in a conference where a lot of teams are swimming well, and where a lot of the bottom teams have upward momentum (including Notre Dame, which had a good day as well under first-year head coach Chris Lindauer, but also had more talent to work with coming into the season). Their struggles with depth will show up more later in the meet. But for now, the early returns are trending in the right direction.

10
Leave a Reply

Subscribe
Notify of

10 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
small bird
1 year ago

go sam pitter! (and chase)

Ghost
1 year ago

Hail to Pitt! Their AD has done an excellent hiring job! Pat Forde wrote a nice article on the Pitt athletic department last week! After all fall championships, Pitt is tied for 6th overall in the Athletic Director’s Cup!
https://twitter.com/bypatforde/status/1623721904375734273?s=61&t=BLZDz0RVMo7Bj_24vUUt9A

A J
1 year ago

“THaT sHOulD hAve BEeN mE” -John hargis

blueandgold
1 year ago

I would not underestimate the impact Sam Pitter has made at that programme. She was very highly regarded at Harvard…

Forever Panther
1 year ago

This senior group for Pitt is truly amazing. They have been core of this team since they arrived on campus. As much as I didn’t like John Hargis as a coach shoutout to him for assembling such great group of great swimmers but what is more important great people and leaders

Coach Cwik
Reply to  Forever Panther
1 year ago

How can you give a shout out to Hargis, when he didn’t do his job. John gave money to bodies and then used them to fill relays, Chase has developed them into leaders. Chase has developed these swimmers into Over Achievers.

Keep up the good work,

That guy
Reply to  Forever Panther
1 year ago

Yea no. John recruited people that would suck up to him and bathe in his glory so people wouldn’t see how poorly he was running the program

WahooWah
1 year ago

Wish we could have Clemson swimming back. And add Wake.

CADWALLADER GANG
Reply to  WahooWah
1 year ago

hoping one day all of the ACC schools have a swim and dive team

anonymous
Reply to  CADWALLADER GANG
1 year ago

Hoping one day all Div 1 schools have a mens and womens swim and dive team. Come on Big 12/SEC (I’m talking to you Oklahoma, Oklahoma St, Kansas State, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas). There’s certainly plenty of space…I’m also aware that it’s not realistic for every Div 2 and 3 school to field a team.

About Braden Keith

Braden Keith

Braden Keith is the Editor-in-Chief and a co-founder/co-owner of SwimSwam.com. He first got his feet wet by building The Swimmers' Circle beginning in January 2010, and now comes to SwimSwam to use that experience and help build a new leader in the sport of swimming. Aside from his life on the InterWet, …

Read More »