Oregon State uses early, late runs to beat Idaho swim team
The Idaho swim team lost a dual meet for the first time in almost three months Saturday.
The Oregon State Beavers won their final home dual of the season, beating the Vandals 151-111 in Corvallis, Oregon.
The Vandals entered Saturday winning their last four dual meets. Their last loss came Nov. 7, when they fell to Northern Arizona 185-115 at home.
The Idaho swimmers and divers will end the regular season against Utah Feb. 14 at the UI Swim Center. The WAC Championships begin Feb. 23 in San Antonio.
“First of all, it’s a very good team,” Idaho coach Mark Sowa said. “Larry Liebowitz is a heck of a coach with a long and distinguished career. We knew that they were going to be well-prepared and very excited to race us.”
The Beavers won nine out of the 14 events in the win.
Idaho got off to a good start by winning the first event of the afternoon. Sophomore Victoria Papke, freshman Cara Jernigan, junior Jamie Sterbis and senior Erica Anderson combined to win the 200-yard medley relay.
Sterbis won three individual events on the day — the 200 butterfly, the 100 freestyle and the 100 butterfly.
Oregon State won the next four events. The Beavers’ Sammy Harrison won two out of those four events, including the 1,000 freestyle. Harrison won by more than 25 seconds over Idaho freshman Christine Renzini, who finished second in the event.
Harrison also beat Idaho senior Rachel Millet by just over two seconds in the 200 freestyle. She won three individual events in the meet.
“We’re dealing with a little sickness this week,” Sowa said. “We’re a little bit banged up kind of entering into the final phase of our season a little bit, but we didn’t use that as excuses. We didn’t look at that as a reason not to win. Sometimes you just come up short.”
Idaho fought back by winning events six through eight, but the Beavers finished strong, winning five out of the last six events.
“I had a feeling they’d be really good,” Sowa said. “It’s always tough to get up and race coming off of an eight-hour bus ride the night before, but our team loves challenges and we didn’t back away from that.”
The Idaho dive team also competed over the weekend. While Sowa coached the swimmers in Corvallis, Oregon, Saturday, Idaho diving coach Kelly Gufford took the divers to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to compete at the Air Force Diving Invitational Friday and Saturday.
“So overall this is the strongest we have looked all season,” Gufford said. “We have a very young group and we have always missed dives. So, across the board we didn’t have any major misses. We were very, very solid.”
In the preliminary round of the 1-meter dive, Idaho freshman Nikki Imanaka took 26th out of 47 divers in the event. No Idaho divers advanced to the 1-meter or the 3-meter championship round.
Junior Delaney Peugh took 19th out of 35 divers in the platform dive. Gufford said Peugh set a new personal best on the platform and freshman Maren Seljevold set a personal best on the 3-meter.
“We want to win every meet that we can, but our primary focus is being great at the end of this month, and we’re going to do that,” Sowa said. “We knew it was a challenge, but we’re going to get back to what we do well, and that’s training and getting rest and getting healthy and we’ll be great Vandals at the end of February.”
Garrett Cabeza can be reached at [email protected]