The Idaho swimming and diving team fell to Boise State on Saturday 210-90, despite strong efforts off the board and in the water.The Vandals hosted the Broncos at the Idaho Swim Center, and an enthusiastic crowd was in attendance just hours before the football team hosted its Homecoming game.
“We love racing in front of our fans,” coach Mark Sowa said. “For an 11 o’clock meet on Homecoming — to have this many fans come out, we’re pretty darn excited and grateful for that.”
The highlight for the Vandals came by way of sophomore Rachel Millet, who took on three races on the day with the 100- and 200-freestyle events and ended her day with another victory in the 200-meter individual medley.
“It’s fun to watch Rachel race,” Sowa said. “She is a very prepared athlete — she’s very thoughtful in her training every day. Some of what you saw is what we see every day, which is pretty awesome. She had a great summer of training and a great summer of racing.”
Millet’s Saturday was even more impressive because according to Sowa, she broke her foot over the summer.
Adding to the Vandals’ points total on Saturday was junior diver Paige Hunt, whose score of 283.80 in the 3-meter dive was good enough to win the event and start the day off on a high note.
Unfortunately for the Vandals, they were unable to keep that momentum for the rest of the day as the defending Mountain West Conference champions took 12 events out of a possible 17.
Sowa said competing against teams like BSU can only help the Vandals.
“We need to race teams that, on paper, are better than us, and this is a very well coached team down there in Southern Idaho,” Sowa said. “She has done a tremendous job with them and basically to me, I look at them and they are a top 20, top 25 team in the country, so for us to match up as well as we did, I am pretty happy with it.”
The Vandals won’t have long to reflect on their loss to BSU. They are back in the water next Saturday against Seattle University in Moscow.
Sowa said he is looking forward to the year ahead, and in his second season he is ready to help the team improve and face a schedule that is more forgiving than the one they faced last year.
“It’s a much more balanced schedule then we inherited a year ago,” Sowa said. “I’m pretty happy with that. We’re four home and away–which is the way it should be.”
As for Saturday’s loss to the Broncos, Sowa said doesn’t plan on ignoring that match-up anytime soon.
“We enjoy swimming the Broncos, we will always swim the Broncos and were going to find a way to keep inching a little bit forward on them,” Sowa said.
Jacob Dyer can be reached at [email protected]