2008 Woodie Awards
Women Swimmers Excel Both In and Out of the Pool
Kieran O’Shea
Issue date: 2/23/05 Section: Sports
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The Jaspers got off to a quick start by winning the opening 200 yd. Medley Relay in a time of 2:20.25 seconds. The relay team consisted of Sarah Szotak, Courtney Arduini, Maura McGowan, and Michelle LaTouche. It was the dominant race of the day where the lady Jaspers crushed the other competition with close to a 12 second margin between them and the second place finishers and gave everyone else a preview of what was to come. Then the second relay team of the day consisted of Kristin Ziegelbauer, LaTouche, Heather Kennedy, and Nicole Mason captured the 200 yd. Freestyle Relay in a time of 1:56.07.
The Jaspers continued their domination of the pool by placing 1st in 4 of the other 8 events in the meet. The Lady Jaspers were led by Sophomore Courtney Arduini, who won 2 individual events. She captured the 100 Breats-Stroke in 1:14.85 and the 100 fly as well. Co-Captain Kennedy won the 500 Freestyle distance race which consisted of 20 laps in the pool in 6:09.61 minutes. She dominated over the rest of the field while Megan Daley pulled up in second place with a time of 6:36.78 minutes. Sarah Szotak won the other individual even with a time of 1:06.07 in the Back-Stroke.
The girls have been tapering off lately in preparations for their MAAC Championship meet this week so that they are as fit and in shape as they could possibly be. Tapering off is the process where they work harder and harder for shorter periods of time to build up their speed instead of their endurance which the girls have already had enough of. This year's squad is lucky to have the flexibility and versatility to put different swimmers in almost any event. Most of the girls on the team are multi-eventers and can jump in anywhere in the line up. Coach Olsenwski was very proud of that fact with the Championships coming up. Hopefully no unforeseen injuries will call for the girls to have to do that. They are pretty strong all around. As for coaches predictions on the Championships he said "We would like to finish and score as high as possible. The goal this year is to get over 127 points, which no other former team has done." So that would be one of the main accomplishments and is one of the main goals the team has set as they prepare to race this weekend. The other goal he said was for the team to hopefully finish ahead of 8th place which is where the Jaspers unfortunately ended up last year. So if both of those goals are attained he says that it will have been a successful weekend. We only hope that they can do that and more.
Concluding the season with a 10-5 MAAC, the women's recorded their third consecutive 10 win season which is the first time that has happened in the history of MC swimming. So that was another outstanding feat that these girls accomplished by racing their hearts out on Saturday. They needed both wins in order to do it and with only a few points separating each of the teams the meet could have fallen either way. So every point was critical in the win.
On a side note it was also announced at this past meet that the Lady Jaspers had again been awarded the Academic All-American Team plaque for the 16th consecutive semester, which is and astonishing streak. In fact the record is the longest standing record in NCAA Division I Women's Athletics at this point in time. Coach Olsenwski and the girls accepted the plaque and took pictures together after the meet to commemorate the award. They were all very proud of it considering the difficulty it must be to keep the record going. In order to receive the award the girls had to have a cumulative GPA team average of 3.2 or above in order to even qualify. This squad posted a 3.477 which is very impressive. Congratulations to all the girls for that achievement.
Looking forward Olsewski mentioned that he's already been recruiting lots of girls to come here and swim for the team next year. "We would like to have a few more dedicated swimmers" he added, but hopefully the incoming freshman class will be able to fill any of the voids this team may have. The one positive is that they're not losing any girls to graduation for next year. So hopefully all the girls will all be back and continue to build upon the success of this season.