By the time the four-day WAC Swimming and Diving Championships ended Saturday in San Antonio, Idaho had done just about everything except win the meet.
The Vandals notched eight individual WAC titles which was more than any other team, 13 school records, junior Rachel Millet earned the WAC Swimmer of the Year, Mairin Jameson earned the WAC Diver of the Year, Kelly Gufford earned WAC Diving Coach of the Year and Idaho scored in every event for the first time in school history.
Despite all of the individual and team accomplishments, Idaho finished second at the championships behind Northern Arizona. NAU won its first WAC Championship with 743 points to Idaho’s 642.
“Northern Arizona is a very good team and they let us hang around for most of that meet,” Idaho coach Mark Sowa said. “We were in for a fight. We ran up a little short on that last day. That last day of the meet was very, very good for them, but I couldn’t be happier with our performance.”
NAU won only three events over the four-day meet, but had enough depth to get the victory. Sowa said NAU still got significant points in the events Idaho scored in, while Idaho didn’t do as well in the distance events — a strength of NAU.
The strength for Idaho came in the diving events. After seniors Jameson and Paige Hunt went 1-2 in the 1-meter dive Wednesday and the 3-meter dive Thursday, Hunt won the platform dive with a school record score of 265.55 on Saturday. Jameson finished the platform event in fourth.
“That was the meet of her life,” Sowa said of Jameson. “We know how talented Mairin (Jameson) is … every year she’s gotten better. We’re proud of Paige (Hunt) as well. What people didn’t see is that, on 3-meter, Paige was in a fight for second. I’m proud of both of them.”
In the pool, Millet’s two individual victories and two school records came in the 100-yard freestyle in 50.08 seconds and the 200 individual medley in 1:59.60. She was also a part of two of Idaho’s second place relay teams — the 200 medley relay and the 200 freestyle relay.
“What people don’t know about Rachel (Millet) is she’s finishing her undergraduate degree this year, this semester, and she’s going to stay here on work on her master’s,” Sowa said. “So she’s not only great in the pool, she’s great in the classroom as well.”
In addition to Millet, Jameson and Hunt, the rest of the Idaho athletes that broke school records either individually or in relays were sophomore Jamie Sterbis, senior Megan Venlos, junior Erica Anderson, junior Kirah Monks and freshman Taylor-Lee Strachan.
When Sowa first joined the program, he said his goal was to not finish last at the WAC Championships. Over four years, his team has improved from eighth, to seventh, to fourth and finally, second.
“There’s no magic formula,” Sowa said. “We’ve certainly had our ups and we’ve certainly had our downs, but we’re going to keep trying to bring a championship home to Moscow.”
Stephan Wiebe can be reached at [email protected]