SAN ANTONIO – Day one of the Trinity Shootout proved to very helpful to the Wayland Baptist men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams.
The WBU men and women both are in fourth place and looking to move up after stellar performances Saturday.
“The meet went really well,” Coach Alyson Hannan said. “We qualified a lot of our kids (for nationals).”
The meet, which started in the morning with preliminaries and had finals in the evening, provided more national qualifiers for both Pioneer teams.
Hannan felt many of her swimmers had “phenomenal races,” but the race that started it all was the women’s 200-meter freestyle relay.
“That race set the tone for us in the meet,” she said. “It was a really close and exciting race.”
The women earned first place and qualified for nationals with an “A” cut, as did sophomore Darby Dehass with an individual time of 25.45 seconds. Because Dehass was the first leg of the relay, her individual time counted as a qualifying mark.
The men followed with a strong outing and a second-place finish while also adding another “A” cut national qualifier, junior Josiah Morales, with a time of 20.90.
Along with new qualifiers, the Pioneer men had two swimmers –Morales and junior Bjoern Globke – who not only won their races but both ticked in the fastest times in the NAIA so far this year. Morales clocked in a 50 freestyle time of 20.93 while Globke swam the 100m breaststroke in 56.01.
The men and women will be back in action Sunday with a similar schedule as Saturday. Prelims will be at 10:30 a.m. and qualifiers will race in the finals at 4 p.m.
Complete results for Saturday’s action were not immediately available.
Swimming news courtesy of Wayland Baptist Swimming & Diving.