Nov. 4, 2005
NORMAL, Ill. -
The Illinois State swimming and diving team competed at Horton Pool against Western Illinois. The `Birds came out victorious and defeated the Westerwinds with a final score of 156-76. The team took an early lead and held on to it for the rest of the meet.
Head coach Steve Paska is thrilled with the success the team is creating.
"We are on a roll," said Paska. "We are caring the momentum with us from last week's Red/White scrimmage. The team had passion, was focused and was really into the meet tonight. All of the girls contributed a collective effort and everyone was positive. We have the excitement of the freshman and the leadership of the seniors pushing us to continue to succeed."
Monique Witkowski, Brittany Armstrong, Brandy Peak, and Kyle Pullman started out the meet with a season best in the 200 yard medley relay scoring an overall time of 1:50.65. After the first event the team continued to build off of the momentum, and Emily Richardson earned another personal best in the 1000 yard freestyle with a time of 10:50.66. Monique Witkowski also earned two personal bests; one in the 200 individual medley with a time of 2:15.21 and the other in the 100 yard freestyle with a time of 54.20. Another outstanding performance was by the one, two, three finish from Katie Borkovec, Christine Steinbach and Katie Finan in the 200 yard freestyle. The Redbird hard work in the water has half way accomplished their weekend goal to be victorious.
"We have one more day of being focused," said Paska. "We achieved one goal tonight, but we still have one to accomplish tomorrow. We are looking for a smooth transition when we perform on the road. Our last two meets have been at home and it will be interesting to see how well they respond to the travel."
Along with swimming team the diving team competed tonight and showed much success on the boards. Diver Emily Hirt showed her consistency to be the lead diver for the team and took first place in both three-meter (246.90) and one-meter (250.12) boards. The entire diving team contributed to the overall team's success.
"These were our best scores of the year," said head coach Tom Davidson. "The past two weeks we have been breaking down dives and working on them. Their hard work showed up tonight in the results."
The swimming and diving team will be traveling to Cedar Falls, Iowa tomorrow to compete against Northern Iowa at 2:00 p.m.
