This past Saturday, the UNH swimming and diving team (2-0) traveled to New Britain, CT to face off against CCSU (1-1), and the Wildcats were able to walk away with a victory.
The ‘Cats entered the meet 1-0, and they continued their early success by winning 175-110 over the weekend. Their record has now improved to 2-0. They won all 16 events in this meet, but the final score was a closer result than the first meet against UVM, which ended as 175-95 win for the Wildcats.
UNH head coach Josh Willman was confident going into this meet, but he knew it was going to be a better matchup than UVM. CCSU did test the ‘Cats but with 16 first-place finishes, UNH was able to pull the win out.
“It’s always good to win, but we are pushing for specific times and we have athletes who are on a good trajectory. We just have to keep pushing and working towards the goals we want,” Willman said.
Once again, the team was led by sophomore freestyler Anna Metzler and senior freestyler Corinne Carbone who each finished first in the three individual events that they participated in, but the help from the younger swimmers helped them get over the hump. Senior diver Anna Burns won both events in diving and it’s an improvement from last week, as those are the two events that UNH was not able to win. It’s a good sign to see the diving starting to perform well as they are going to need Burns to step up in the absence of senior diver Allison Stefanelli. Also, first-year freestyler Jamy Lum posted two first-place finishes and four other first-year swimmers won events as well.
“Jamy had another great meet, she was putting up times which was close to her best so that is really encouraging to see here,” Willman said.
He added, “The first-year swimmers have been great so far, they’re a dedicated and when you have a group like that, they all push each other to be better… we have a good base of young swimmers for the years to come.”
It was a hard-fought meet for the ‘Cats, and they will look to build on their progress against one of their toughest tests of the year as Northeastern comes to town Saturday, Nov. 2nd. Northeastern is coming off a loss to cross-town rival BC and is hungry to get back on the right track on this weekend. Northeastern is a very talented team and UNH has had trouble keeping up with their talent in the past.
“This weekend is going to be a real big test for us because they are so good. We haven’t beaten them in a while so it will be a huge matchup to see where some of our swimmers stand with them. Corinne and Anna will be tested this weekend as Northeastern is a really good sprint team, so it’ll be interesting to see how they do,” Willman said.
