The DU men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams both finished second to Wyoming in their season opener at the Denver Relays in El Pomar Natatorium on Saturday.
Wyoming’s men’s team ended up with 172 points, narrowly beating out the Pioneers’ 170. Air Force was the third men’s team, finishing with 94. The Denver women fell to sole opponent Wyoming 201 to 173.
Junior Kyle Milberg set the El Pomar Natatorium record in the 100 backstroke when he swam his leadoff leg of the 300 backstroke relay in 49.40 seconds.
The previous record was held by North Dakota’s Rodrigero Ferreira, who set it with a time of 49.52 in 2004.
“It was definitely good to swim this fast this early in the year,” said Milberg. “It gives me more motivation and hopefully I can use the momentum to carry over into the bigger meets we have coming up.”
The first race of the day was the women’s 200 medley relay. Junior Gretchen Cohen, senior Bailey Beins and freshmen Kristyna Kolarova and Zoe Huddleston took first with a time of 1:22.90.
The Pioneers gained another first-place finish when sophomores Drew Matthews and Samantha Corea and Beins won the 300 butterfly relay with a time of 2:51.20. Beins, sophomore Bridgette McNally and senior Alex Suppan won the 300 breaststroke relay in 2:50.30.
“We were missing some people due to injury, and I made a couple strategy mistakes, but overall I felt good about the races; there was lots of great effort,” said head coach Brian Schrader.
On the men’s side, Milberg, junior Tanner Krall, sophomore Eric Anderson and senior Cole Worsley took first in the 200 medley relay with a time of 1:32.21. Milberg, sophomore Darian Brunetti and sophomore Willy Van Dehy claimed the top spot in the 300 backstroke relay in 2:48.90.
The Pioneers also won the 400 medley relay in a time of 3:31.90, with a team consisting of Brunetti, Milberg, senior Robert Barrett and junior Doug Mackenzie.
Also of note was freshman Dylan Bunch’s performance, as he was only two seconds off the pool record in his leg of the 1500 yard freestyle relay.
“All in all, both teams did very well,” said Schrader. “They had a lot of swims in a very short amount of time; some swimmers had up to six races each. This format really lends itself to a lot of fun and we will get better as the season goes on.”
The Pioneer women compete again on Saturday when they host Colorado State in El Pomar Natatorium. The men will not compete again until both teams travel to Las Vegas to face UNLV and Arizona on Oct. 27.
