No. 7 Ladies’s Swim/Dive Posts Highest End at D3Shootout, Takes Third

Top-three finishes in a number of occasions propelled the No. 7 Hope College girls’s swimming and diving crew to a third-place end on Saturday because the D3 Shootout concluded on the University of Chicago. 

The Flying Dutch compiled 590 factors to match their highest end ever within the D3 Shootout. Pomona-Pitzer (624.5 factors) received the meet within the closing occasion, snapping Chicago’s (614.5) four-year profitable streak. Both groups had been ranked eighth within the newest nationwide rankings.

Hope additionally achieved an NCAA B reduce within the 400 medley relay, whereas fifth-year Greta Gidley (Franklin, Michigan / Mercy) achieved a nationwide customary within the 200 particular person medley. 

Gidley positioned second within the A closing of the 200 IM with a season-best time of two:04.78. Her mark is underneath final season’s invited time for the 200 IM on the NCAA Division III Championships. 

The 400 medley relay squad of freshman Makenzie Baldwin (Holland, Michigan / West Ottawa), senior Madi Remenschneider (Holland, Michigan / West Ottawa), sophomore Emme D’Errico (Farmington Hills, Michigan / Farmington) and freshman Claudia Busse (Grand Haven, Michigan / Grand Haven) mixed for a season-best time of three:49.40 to put third within the occasion. 

Assistant Coach David Jolly was happy with the crew’s efficiency over the weekend, which noticed impacts from new faces on the crew mixed with the seasoned expertise of the upperclassmen swimmers.

“Overall, we are in a really good spot,” Jolly stated. “Our training has been consistent, and when you have consistency, you execute swims. Over the course of the last few days, everyone did what they were capable of doing. “That bodes effectively for a few weeks after we head to Kenyon.”

Baldwin capped off her first major collegiate meet by improving her NCAA B cut in the 200 backstroke. She finished second in the A final after touching the wall in 2:01.95, marking the fifth-fastest time in Hope history. 

In the B final of the 200 back, senior Katie Hermann (Canton, Michigan / Mercy) placed second with a time of 2:04.02 and was out-touched by four-hundredths of a second. 

Baldwin also won the B final of the 500 freestyle, cruising to a time of 5:02.36. In the process, she became the fourth Hope swimmer to complete the event in under 5:03. 

In the 100 butterfly, senior Laurel Wasiniak (Northville, Michigan / Northville) placed third in the B final (57.97) while Gidley (57.50) finished 7th in the A final as the pair swam nearly identical times. 

Hope also added a pair of second-place finishes in relay events. 

The mixed 400 freestyle relay team of Evan Harris and Christian Hoeksema from the men’s team, combined with senior Bella Turner (Chelsea, Michigan / Chelsea) and Busse from the women’s team, finished second with a time of 3:16.19. 

In the 200 freestyle relay, the team of Gidley, Busse, Turner and Wasiniak were out touched by the squad from Pomona-Pitzer. Hope clocked a time of 1:34.17, 14-hundredeths of a second behind the leader.

Freshman Grace Dawson (Jackson, Michigan / Western) placed seventh in the three-meter diving event, a performance that was not missed by Jolly. 

“You cannot win championships with out divers,” Jolly said. “I consider that Grace, and Finn (Sanders) from the boys’s crew, are going to have a giant impact come February.”

The format of the D3 Shootout allows each of the 10 competing teams to bring eight swimmers plus a diver. Teams entered two swimmers in each event – one in an A flight and the other in a B flight. 

The meet featured some of the best teams in NCAA Division III from across the country, including #8 Chicago, #8 Pomona-Pitzer, #14 WashU, #16 Swarthmore, #20 Trinity (Texas), #25 Washington & Lee, along with (RV) SUNY-Geneseo, Rochester Institute of Technology and UW-Eau Claire.

Hope will take every week off earlier than touring to Gambier, Ohio, for the Total Performance Invitational, hosted by No. 5 Kenyon College. The meet will happen from Thursday-Saturday, Nov. 20-22, with prelims and finals every day.