Women of the MIAC!

Will this be the year of the freshmen? So many new potential stars all around the conference: Gundersen, O’Conner, Punyko, Clauss, Root, to name just a few. Oh, and Kate Alexander, Swimmer of the Meet?

Looking at the Carleton-GAC dual meet for the women, GAC got 49 swimming points from their freshwomen while Carleton got 48 swimming points.

This promises to be quite a battle at Conference.

@openwater wrote:

This promises to be quite a battle at Conference.

I think that St. Olaf has a slight edge on the women’s side.

@Kari Byron wrote:

@openwater wrote:

This promises to be quite a battle at Conference.

I think that St. Olaf has a slight edge on the women’s side.

I will be surprised – I think the Oles sent 4 divers because they couldn’t find 17 swimmers. They need a GOOD recruiting class next year.

@Kari Byron wrote:

@openwater wrote:

This promises to be quite a battle at Conference.

I think that St. Olaf has a slight edge on the women’s side.

Looking at who they lost and have left, that’s a long shot. They have lost girls even since the dual meet with GAC. I think it’s a 2 team battle, but Olaf will have the most impact on the winner of any other team because of who they knock down.

A big point swing will be if Pfau is 100% because she didn’t finish the last dual due to shoulder problems and they need her to be scoring top 4 in her events, plus helping on at least the 400 and 800 FR (they have O’Connor for backstroke, so that could go either way anyway).

Is Pfau back in working order as of now? I’m assuming silentp can find out since I guess he knows her somehow.

@Kari Byron wrote:

Is Pfau back in working order as of now? I’m assuming silentp can find out since I guess he knows her somehow.

No clue. She’s a typical swimmer in that if asked, she’d say “I’m fine.” I don’t see her practice to know how she’s doing there, and that’s what counts.

Forget Olaf. The best they can hope for is a distant third place. The real battle will be between Carleton and Gustavus. How their top swimmers perform will be important (the Alexanders, Gunderson, Pfau). But even more crucial in this close contest will be the performances of people like Larkin Davis, Maggie Luke, and Liz Hartman for Gustavus… Kaarin Taylor and Julia Corrin for Carleton. You don’t hear about them much (and many others), but this year more than ever, they’ve got to step up.

oh, believe me, mindgame, those ladies who need to step up, know they need to step up. and i would agree, this meet won’t be decided by who wins the individual events outright but by who wins depth in a greater number of events.

@Tiger2 wrote:

What’s with Yoshi Ludwig splitting a 57.52 in the medley relay? That’s faster than Rood.
Where did that come from? Amazing!

It was a clear jump that the officials did not catch. Kate A. had a body length lead at the end of the breast over a bunch of teams coming in together but the flyers broke out together. GAC and the Oles and St. Thomas were all within a second of each other one to two seconds behind Carleton coming to the wall. Yoshi left early and then swam a great race but it was not a legal 57.52. GAC won by nearly 1.5 seconds after a pair of smoking freestyle legs by Pfau and Brown so the jump probably wasn’t the difference but it was ‘loud inhale’ bad.

@Kari Byron wrote:

Is Pfau back in working order as of now? I’m assuming silentp can find out since I guess he knows her somehow.

Oh and I guess Sarah’s shoulders can’t be too bad.

@Tiger2 wrote:

If this is true….
Gustavus had better hope that if they win the meet, it is by a margin of at least 50 points or there will be some claiming that they don’t deserve to win.
Also it wouldn’t seem fair that this relay could possibly? qualify for nationals…. and I read that it broke a school record.

No they shouldn’t. It’s not up to the GAC women to catch their jumps, it’s the officials. The officials could have just as easily missed a jump by Olaf or Carleton as they could have one by GAC. That’s just a bonus of being in the middle. With 2 side judges you can push your starts and likely won’t get caught, especially if multiple relays are coming in simultaneously.

Anyone making accusations that they shouldn’t be at NCAAs, or conference champions should they win, should become an official and prevent this from happening. I’ve know a few officials and it’s not as easy as you think to catch jumps.

I wasn’t there. Was the jump really as obvious as openwater says?

it was bad and i had a great view for it… some of the timers and i also thought Hagemeyer’s start was a pretty ify but as everyone has already said you can’t say what ifs and false starts or not they were great swims.

I was obviously not there, but if the official doesn’t call it, it is not a false start… in fact, I’d say it is a GREAT start. Of course, if the official did call it, it was the worst start of the meet.

Niether GAC, nor Hagemeyer, nor Yoshi (whoever she is… I know zero about the womens team), has to appologize if GAC wins by the margin of their points.

Losers blame the ref… winners go home and f— the prom queen. I wonder if Hagemeyer is dating a prom queen.

Maybe it was bad, or maybe GAC really knows how to do thier exchanges better than everyone else at the meet. Was Amundson’s exchange on the 200 MR a jump too? He was almost a second faster than his open…just like Yoshi. Maybe if anyone has a fast exchange then they should be DQed right? Or maybe they could just go and look at the relay pads (are they using them again this year?). Every one said that Kenyon jumped at NATS a few years ago, but if the refs didnt see it, it didnt happen.

@Tiger2 wrote:

@Volume wrote:

Maybe it was bad, or maybe GAC really knows how to do thier exchanges better than everyone else at the meet.

I agree.
After seeing Yoshi’s split in the 200 MR (25.23), I’m thinking she’s simply a great relay swimmer!

Yes she is swimming very well at this meet. The gasps heard on Thursday night during the 4 Medley were mainly from the Gustavus parents sitting behind the Carleton parents. As an official, I agree that the difference between a great start and a DQ is thin and what is done is done – I was simply answering the question “where did the 57.5 split come from” – on that particular occaision it came from a gasp worthy jump.

Congratulations to all of the MIAC women! Many excellent performances this weekend, and perhaps several national qualifiers!
The future looks much brighter than it did a year ago.

Indeed. A great meet to watch, probably the most fun I’ve had in the stands in a while. Should be quite a showdown next year between Carleton, Olaf, and Gustavus if you take into account their graduating classes.

@openwater wrote:

@Kari Byron wrote:

@openwater wrote:

This promises to be quite a battle at Conference.

I think that St. Olaf has a slight edge on the women’s side.

I will be surprised – I think the Oles sent 4 divers because they couldn’t find 17 swimmers. They need a GOOD recruiting class next year.

Mmmm my words taste so good tonight for dessert. Olaf may have only been able to find 16 swimmers but they did a great job of maximizing their point total. The ~90 point swing on diving over Carleton was the difference this year and promises to be a factor for the future; 40 points from Germeroth is a nice place to start each year’s conference meet.

And speaking of diving, why do divers count 1/3 of a swimmer instead of 3 divers equaling 2 swimmers? Olaf had 16 swimmers (48 individual events) and 4 divers (8 individual events) for a total of 56 entries. A team with no divers would get 54 individual entries. Carleton in fact had 17 swimmers (51) and 1 diver (2) for 53 total. Am I missing some logic here?

swimmers can contribute to relays as well, divers can’t

Divers can be on relays (but only if they are at the meet as a swimmer I think). There was a kid from Hamline a few years ago that did diving and some relays and some individuals as well.

They don’t count for a third if they swim and dive. They count for 1 person. You’re only a third if you only dive.

That is what I thought.

@openwater wrote:

Will this be the year of the freshmen? So many new potential stars all around the conference: Gundersen, O’Conner, Punyko, Clauss, Root, to name just a few. Oh, and Kate Alexander, Swimmer of the Meet?

Looking at the Carleton-GAC dual meet for the women, GAC got 49 swimming points from their freshwomen while Carleton got 48 swimming points.

This promises to be quite a battle at Conference.

Well I was wrong again. Congrats to the Gustavus freshwomen – here are some stats:

Freshwomen points:
Gustavus 235/564 (non diving, non relay pts) = 42% of team total
Carleton 137/398 = 34%
St.Olaf 72/365 = 20%

Gustavus frosh had 10/20 relay swims (4 senior swims)
Carleton 5/20 (0 seniors)
St. Olaf 5/20 (9 seniors)
Gustavus and Carleton both scored 178 relay pts, St. Olaf had 168 pts.

Gustavus got 18 of 47 dive pts from their frosh
Carleton got all 13 of theirs from their frosh
St. Olaf got 40 of 101 from Alyssa.

Agreed the freshwomen of gustavus and carleton did stack up points, they had amazing swims, but you also need to consider there were only three freshwomen from st. olaf (not including diving)

@swedishfish wrote:

Agreed the freshwomen of gustavus and carleton did stack up points, they had amazing swims, but you also need to consider there were only three freshwomen from st. olaf (not including diving)

I agree – the 3 Olaf frosh scored 72 pts while the 6 Carleton frosh scored not quite twice that. The real point getters were the 6 Gustavus frosh that scored nearly 40 points apiece.

@mindgame wrote:

Forget Olaf. The best they can hope for is a distant third place.

Clearly mindgame jumped the gun on this assumption. That, however, is not my point. A lot of people seemed to discount Olaf after their duel meet with Carleton and this seems to have happened in years past as well. Two years ago, Carleton beat Olaf in their duel just a few weeks out from conference, but the Oles turned around and won the miac championship. Is Carleton just a good duel meet team? Was their taper just too long? Is the timing of their training trip too soon since they are on trimester? Why is it that the knights are expected to perform well at conference, but somehow fall apart when they get there?

@iswimfar wrote:

@mindgame wrote:

Forget Olaf. The best they can hope for is a distant third place.

Clearly mindgame jumped the gun on this assumption. That, however, is not my point. A lot of people seemed to discount Olaf after their duel meet with Carleton and this seems to have happened in years past as well.

Yeah that was a really bad call on my part. I totally overlooked the impact of dual meet scoring. Carleton had 75% of the first-place finishes at the dual, which gave them a huge point advantage. Their first places at conference didn’t have as much of an impact obviously.
I don’t think Carleton swam poorly at conference or had a bad taper, just not quite as much depth as Olaf. Actually considering their lack of diving points, Carleton stayed in the game pretty well.