After starting the season 4 and 0, the Augustana Men’s and Women’s Swimming team looks to continue their success this upcoming weekend when they participate in the Wheaton Invite.
When asking men’s Junior captain, Jared Ekberg, about what has made the Vikings successful so far this season, Ekberg had plenty to say.
“We have had a lot of success in the meets so far mostly because of paying attention to the small things. We lost a lot of important swimmers last year, but people are continually stepping up. We have a lot of room to grow this season but I’m confident in the team’s ability to step up at meets and swim the way they need to compete,” Ekberg said.
Over on the women’s side, they have a success so far this season a lot of which is due to their team’s chemistry.
“I think our team chemistry is strong. The women’s team is really trying to focus on building those strong relationships and encouragement in and out of the pool,” Senior, Sara Hovren, said.
When asking Hovren what they need to do to have success in the invite this weekend, she got right down to it.
“We have to stay focused. We have to treat this meet like conference since it is the first one this year to have a prelim and finals. This will help us to learn how to help our bodies recover faster,” Hoven explained.
The Vikings fought hard this weekend but ended up finishing 5th out of 5 teams for Men’s and Women’s.
For the Men’s, Ekberg was third in the 100 backstroke with a time of 52:22. The 400 freestyle relay of Junior, Bryan Haage, Freshman, Jeremy Wolf, Senior, Miguel Rodriguez, and Ekberg finished sixth with a time of 3:13.37.
For the Women, Junior, Rachel Heah, took 12th in the 100 backstroke (1:06.25), Sophomore, Gabrielle Ainsworth, was 12th in the 100 butterfly (1:04.01), and Junior, Victoria Frank, placed 12th in the 1650 freestyle (21:15.46).
Vikings are set to square off against Carthage on December 9th, where they look to get a huge victory on the road.