Swimming makes history, takes first C-USA crown

By Christine Jeon     3/10/11 6:00pm

Never having won the Conference USA Championship, the swim team has been well accustomed to placing third or a satisfactory second, but this year was different. The squad has always preached optimism before the first splashes of every conference championship, but reality usually set in, for the Owls quickly resigned themselves to yet another year staring up at perennial champ Southern Methodist University. However, the depth and sharp execution delivered by the team last week in University of Houston's Recreational Center Natatorium provided some new pages for the school's record books. On day one, the relay team started the Owls strong as the foursome of freshman Michelle Gean, junior Shelby Bottoms, sophomore Kylee Talwar and freshman Karina Wlostowska swam a season-best 1:43.15 to place third in the 200-medley relay, the third-fastest time in Rice history. The 800-freestyle relay team carried out the momentum, with freshman Chelsea Fong, junior Alex O'Brien, junior Alison Godbe and sophomore Stephanie Wei blazed to a third-place finish with a season-best 7:23.42, the fourth-fastest time in school history.

The second day of the four-day battle was comprised a series of season and career best performances that placed Rice only a narrow nine points behind SMU. To start the day off, Gean, Bottoms, Fong and sophomore Kim Steinhouse placed second in the 400-medley relay with a time of 3:45.13, the second-fastest in school history.

The 500-freestyle swimmers went to distance right after, with five placing in the top 11. Godbe was fourth (career-best 4:53.58), sophomore Danielle Spence fifth (season-best 4:54.61), junior Nicole Delaloye seventh (season-best 4:56.63), freshman Quincy Christian 10th (career-best 4:56.63) and Karen Gerken 11th (5:00.10).

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The neck-and-neck day two wrapped up with three Owls racking points in the 50-freestyle Championships. Steinhouse, senior Erin Mattson and Wlostowska finished sixth, seventh and eighth respectively (23.46; 23.57; 23.91). Rice now had 230 points to SMU's 239.

Day three proved crucial to the Owls' success as the depth of team managed to continuously rack up points throughout the various events. In the 200-free relay, Steinhouse, Bottoms, Wlostowska and Fong finished a solid third with a season best time of 1:33.36.

The highlight of the day came from Christian, who broke the 16-year- old Rice record in the 400-individual medley with a blazing time of 4:16.13. She set the new UH Natatorium record, which was previously held by eventual-Olympian Ginny Farmer in 1995 with a time of 4:17.83.

"I remember having this huge smile on my face, and I finally opened my eyes after swimming the last lap with my eyes closed," Christian said. "Confidence was really the key to my performance. Two weeks out I knew I was going to have a great meet because I didn't let myself think anything else."

Senior Erin Mattson, a fifth-year senior who has fought through a host of injuries, then swam her best 100-butterfly race in two years to finish fourth (55.81).

The points poured in thereon after, with Fong, Steinhouse and Godbe placing fourth (1:50.10), fifth (1:51.23) and sixth (1:51.41) respectively with their career-best times in the 200-freestyle. Bottoms then came up big with a career-best 1:04.65 to take sixth in the 100-breaststroke, an event that she normally did not swim in.

Heading into the last day of the championships, the Owls, who had tallied 451 points, were looking at a five-point lead over SMU. According to Gerken, senior and captain, the Owls found a newly gained confidence and conviction that they could win the whole thing.

"We always want to swim fast, but as we started to realize that winning was within our grasp, the team as a whole started swimming out of their minds, doing their best for the interest of the team," she said. "We all were so pumped going into the last session on Saturday."

The mile started off the Saturday morning. Christian picked up right from where she left off by finishing second with her season-best time of 16:45.58, the fifth-fastest mile in school history. She was followed by Spence (16:52.47) and O'Brien (16:53.30), who were third and fourth, respectively.

Senior Kait Chura (2:00.34), Gean (2:01.86) and Wei (2:02.45) placed fourth, sixth and seventh, respectively, in the 200-breaststroke, while Fong and Steinhouse were seventh (51.03) and eighth (51.46) respectively, in the 100-free. O'Brien came up big with a third in the 200-backstroke (2:17.69), and senior Asthen Ackerman (2:22.31) and Talwar (2:20.59) were eight and 10th. The final individual heats were capped off by Mattson (2:01.87) finishing third and Bottoms (2:02.58) fourth in the 200-butterfly.

The Owls were in business heading into the final 4x100-relay; all they had to do was not disqualify, and the conference title would be theirs. Yet, to finish with content was not on the girls' agenda, as the foursome of Steinhouse, Gean, Bottoms and Fong finished second with a season-best 3:24.46 that provisionally qualified for the NCAA Championships.

"Obviously, our goal was to win coming into the meet," Head Coach Seth Huston said. "Our team stepped up across the board, and we performed really well in the morning preliminaries. That set us up each day to score big."

Huston noted how the team was able to utilize its depth to get a large amount of points in every event.

"I was very proud of how our team performed from start to finish," Huston said. "We really out -performed our competition. The fact that we won the meet despite winning only one event and without diving is a tribute to the unselfish team work we had."

Gerken echoed her coach's sentiments about getting a solid effort from the entire squad.

"We may not have had girls winning events the way SMU did, but every single girl on our team contributed to that final score, even girls swimming off events in the consolation heats," Gerken said. "Winning the 500 last year was a great moment for me personally, and that will always be an awesome memory. But this was the best meet of my life, not because I was winning individual events but because the team victory, something Rice has been working on for years, was so phenomenal and so much a group effort, from the girls on the team this year and the girls in the past who helped build this team into what it is today."

Along with Gerken, three other seniors celebrated the bittersweet chapter that ended their Rice swimming career."We did something that no one from Rice University has ever done before, and we did it in style," Chura said. "Not having a diving team score a single point for a team at the championship level is rare, to say the least. Every single girl on our team stepped up and competed."

Mattson was able to bounce back from an injury-plagued career to help Rice this year as the oldest girl on the team.

"Many of the past swimmers on the team gave just as much as, if not more than, a lot of the girls currently on the team," Mattson said. "Without their perseverance and belief in the program we would not have been able to recruit the team we have now, and winning conference might not have been possible."

Ackerman spoke about the pressure the seniors felt to deliver a winning result.

"I didn't want to let my team down, especially with the meet being so close. I really just freaked out for prelims, and once I made it back in finals, I just let my body take over and tried to keep my mind out of the race and keep my end times and season in perspective. I didn't swim amazing times, but I was very happy with how I swam.

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