On Oct. 11, both the Augustana men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams won their first dual meet against Loras College, a meet in which the women’s team scored its highest total points since 2023. After a quick turnaround, the teams traveled to Grinnell, Iowa, to face the Grinnell College Pioneers, followed by the Colorado College Tigers on Oct. 17 and 18.
Despite the success from the first meet, the teams faced tough competition and were eventually defeated by both the Pioneers and the Tigers. The men’s team fell 225-121 and 203.50-136.50, while the women’s team lost 240-109 and 219-201.
Some of the notable results include junior Kendle Mihm winning the 100-yard freestyle event. First-Years Mya Pheneger and Charlotte Vogen, sophomore Giselle Koonce and Mihm placed second in the 400-yard freestyle relay for the women’s team. On the men’s side, First-Year Alejandro Jacob claimed first place in the 100-yard backstroke event, and sophomore Carter Lavold finished in third place in the 400-yard individual medley with a time of 4:29.70.
While the big picture is to win, sophomore Giselle Koonce said she saw these meets as an important opportunity to build momentum and create a baseline for how the team can compete against tougher competition before conference meets.
“Before we go to the invite level, it’s important to have a starting level of competition,” Koonce said. “These two teams are very different levels of competition, so it helps build up our competitive sets while not actually being in an invite environment. But it still helps us be able to get that sense of competition early in the season.”
With tougher competition, Head Coach Ramsey Vens gave the teams a challenge of their own as well. With the meets getting stronger throughout the season, Vens said she is having the athletes swim events that they usually don’t swim until later in the season, to get a good starting point.
This pushes the swimmers out of their comfort zones and helps them develop versatility and gain experience in different events early on, which can pay off later in the season when lineups get more competitive.
“They are significantly more difficult events,” Vens said. “They’re longer distance events, but if we don’t take the opportunity now to swim those now, they’re not going to be able to swim them for a while. I was talking to our team before practice, I said, ‘Let’s just rip the Band-Aid off, let’s get after it.’ We’re just trying to get our swimmers feeling pretty good in the water, comfortable in their strokes, and help them get their speed back a little bit.”
Though Vens wants the players to place high in their events, she said she is also focused on the technique early in the season and sees it as the most important part of the meets. Practicing the small details during an early meet in the season can go a long way for the swimmers.
Beyond the competition, these early meets have played a crucial role in building team chemistry between the swimmers. With 16 First-Years joining between the men’s and women’s squads, the team is still learning how to race together, as well as find their identity as a new group.
“We’re starting to get to know each other as a team, and having those wins together boosts morale and keeps everyone excited for the next meet to see how well we can continue to do,” sophomore Ava Kauffeld said. “We’re all leaning on each other to accept our new coach with an open mindset and taking it week by week, adjusting to the new coaching style, and overall, it’s been pretty good, and I know that the team has enjoyed the new, different types of practices that we’ve had.”
This season also brings a fresh start under Vens, a First-Year head coach, who is working to build upon the culture that has already been established, while adding some of her own ideas to the team. Kauffeld said she has enjoyed the new ideas Vens brings to the team.
After the defeats, both men’s and women’s teams look ahead to face Monmouth College on Friday, Oct. 24, and hope to bounce back from a 1-2 start after the dual meets.
