Competing for the first time since Oct. 9, when both teams lost to St. Louis University, the men’s and women’s squads took first at the meet, edging out Washington & Lee University, Centre College, and DePauw University.

“It was hard, in the first couple of meets, to do anything significant to help us to go fast. It was just not enough time, and I felt like we had the opportunity [to train], and we did,” head coach Brad Shively said. “We went to work and had a few weeks of really solid training behind us.”

The women’s team scored 720 points, 86 points higher than second-place finisher DePauw. Freshmen Grace Murray, Chi Pham and Paige VanTassell each took first in pairs of individual events.

“It’s the whole idea of coming to college, coming and stepping it up,” Pham said. “Me, Grace and Paige are pretty good training partners. Both Grace and Paige are really good distance swimmers, and so they pace off each other a lot.”

Pham and VanTassell also competed in the final event of the meet—the 400-yard freestyle relay—with fellow freshman Allison Siegel and junior Amy Vanlishout. The Bears took the top two spots in the race; the “A” relay finished in 3:41.74, ahead of the Bears’ “B” squad, who finished in 3:44.60.

“[The freshmen] certainly are a talented group of young women, and I think that what we’ve seen so far is that they’re also pretty tough, that they’ve been very competitive in races. They’ve really gone after things. I think it’s been a nice spark,” Shively said. “I think a lot of it is the leadership from the upperclassmen, too. You can have a lot of talent, but if you don’t have a great deal of direction, it isn’t going to go where you want to go.”

Senior Karin Underwood, co-captain of the women’s team, placed first in the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 2:12.96 and, with freshman Connie Shao, junior Karina Stridh and senior Claire Henderson, won the 200-medley relay in 1:52.94.

The men’s team, in a much closer contest, finished with 734 points, ahead of Washington & Lee (716), DePauw (697) and Centre (374).

“I thought we had a lot of emotion, a lot of enthusiasm, and once, particularly on the guy’s side, they knew it was close, they really rallied and came through with some really strong swims at the end of the meet,” Shively said.

Seniors David Chao and Michael Flanagan, co-captains of the men’s team, also garnered first-place finishes in two individual races each.

Chao won both the 200-yard freestyle (1:44.98) and the 100-yard freestyle (47.62) while Flanagan took first in the 100-yard butterfly (52.77) and the 200-yard butterfly (1:56.84).

“I was definitely happy with all my results because they were definitely my fastest times this season, and I definitely think that three weeks of training from our last meet was a factor in time, for me, but I also think that the level of competition…was more intense,” Chao said.

Freshman Alex Cox took first in the 1,000-yard freestyle (10:08.56); junior Chris Valach won the 500-yard freestyle (4:52.95), and freshman Tyler Perez won the 200-yard IM (2:01.50).

Chao also swam the final leg of the men’s 400-yard freestyle relay, anchoring the team in a heated race. The team of Chao, freshman Jason Wan, sophomore Mark Minowitz and senior Kartik Anjur took first (3:10.91), securing the Bears’ overall victory in the meet.

“It was us and DePauw battling for first, and each leg there was a lead change,” Chao said. “When I dove in for the anchor leg, we were a little behind, but for me, in the past three years, a lot of my best races have been coming from behind just because I get an extra adrenaline rush from having the team on my shoulders and being able to come up with an ‘underdog’ victory.”

The team will return to Wash. U.’s Millstone Pool on Saturday, Nov. 6 to host a dual meet with conference rival University of Chicago. The meet begins at 1 p.m.

“It’s actually our only UAA dual meet of the season, so we want to definitely come out on top for this one. It’s going to be a really close meet, so we’re looking forward to the challenge ahead of us,” Chao said.

Senior Alex Beyer competes in the 200 breaststroke. Beyer took first in this event, the 400 IM and was part of the first place 400 freestyle relay team. The men defeated DePauw 151-147. (Jared Bullock | Student Life)

With a first-place finish in Saturday’s last event, the 400 freestyle relay, the men secured a 151-147 win, while the women’s squad bested the Tigers, 155-129.

“The guys came through with a really solid swim. That’s a good way to finish it,” head coach Brad Shively said. “[There was] competitiveness in the relays. I liked seeing the relays out there fighting and scrapping, getting a little down and dirty. I think that’s the sign of a team that’s got some grit.”

The relay, comprised of senior Dan Arteaga, freshman Mark Minowitz, senior Alex Beyer and junior David Chao, finished the close race less than one second ahead of DePauw’s ‘A’ relay in 3:10.07.

“I’m a huge relay swimmer; I get really pumped up especially on anchor leg,” Chao said. “We had to win that relay to win the meet, so I kind of like the pressure.”

The men’s team took first place in seven events in addition to the winning relay and the 200 medley relay. Sophomore Chris Valach won the 1,000 and 500 freestyles. Seniors Beyer and Dima Galkin claimed first and second place in the 200 breaststroke.

Beyer also won the 400 individual medley. Chao took the top spot in the 200 freestyle, and fellow junior Michael Flanagan swept the butterfly events. Chao was also the lone Wash. U. swimmer to win an event against SIUC, taking the 100 freestyle in 47.40.

“We got a couple of victories against two very good teams…I thought it was great. We swam a meet last night, and [the team] didn’t make any excuses,” Shively said. “I thought we swam a lot tougher today than we did [against SIUC]. I just thought we were really competitive, really combative out there.”

The women’s team had victories in 10 events, and several swimmers claimed two individual races. Senior captain Jessie Lodewyk took both distance freestyle events, and sophomore Karina Stridh won the 100 backstroke and 50 freestyle. Three new Bears won events: Freshman Meg Powers swept the butterfly events, Sarah Paleg won the 1-meter diving, and Veronica Tse won the 200 freestyle. Powers expressed excitement for the team’s future events.

“I’m pumped. This is really fun,” Powers said. “We’re definitely very good at getting pumped up…We’re really good at having men’s and women’s [teams] working together.”

Shively noted the teams’ consistency as a key to the wins. With two dual meets in two days, the team worked on moving swimmers in different events to test its strengths.

“I don’t think there’s an event that we have where we are great, and we’re trying to make sure that any event that we’re pretty good at, if it’s a strength, it stays a strength,” Shively said. “We’re also trying to shore up, and we swam people in a lot of different things between [SIUC] and [DePauw] to try and figure out what we have.”

The Bears continue competition on Nov. 21 at the Washington University Thanksgiving Invitational.

“I thought they did a great job. What you try to do in a meet like this is try to gauge the effectiveness of your training and their intensity throughout the first semester. You hope that you put it together well enough that at least you give them the opportunity to go out and swim fast, and I thought we did,” Head Coach Brad Shively said.

Junior Alex Beyer continued his strong season by breaking three school records and automatically qualifying for nationals in the 500-yard freestyle, 800-yard freestyle relay and the 400-yard individual medley. Beyer broke his own record in the 500-free and IM, while his leading leg of the 800-free relay also broke a Wash. U. record.

Freshman Karina Stridh broke a school record and automatically qualified for the NCAAs with a time of 51.19 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle, breaking the school record by .64 seconds. Stridh also broke the school record in 50-yard freestyle and qualified for NCAAs in the 50-free and the 100-yard backstroke.

“He [Shively] was giving us a little bit of a pep talk, and he was saying, ‘Don’t be surprised by greatness.’ I guess that kind of summed up how I felt about a lot of it because I really was surprised by how well I did, but most other people, especially the upperclassmen, know that this is an important meet and get really good times,” Stridh said.

Aside from Beyer and Stridh, all other NCAA-qualifying times were provisional.

On Friday, junior Brian Kushner, freshman Chris Valach, senior Kelly Kono and junior Jessie Lodewyk all provisionally qualified in the 500-freestyle, with Kushner and Lodewyk finishing second in their respective races.

Senior Kevin Leckey and sophomore David Chao took first and second in the 100-freestyle, and junior Dima Galkin and sophomore Michael Flanagan finished second in the 100-yard breaststroke and 200-yard butterfly respectively to also provisionally qualify for nationals, on Friday.

The women saw two other swimmers provisionally qualify for nationals, as sophomores Claire Henderson and Karin Underwood took first and second respectively in the 200-yard backstroke.

The Wash. U. men provisionally qualified in nine more events on Saturday. Leckey won the 50 and 200-freestyle, Chao came in second in both events and Beyer and senior Julian Beattie finished first and second in the 200-breaststroke, respectively. Junior Dan Arteaga and Flanagan also qualified in the 50-freestyle. The last individual qualifier for the men was Valach with a win in the 1,650-yard freestyle.

Three women individually qualified on Saturday, with Kono, Lodewyk and freshman Samantha Schulte taking first, second and third in the 1,650-yard freestyle. Kono also won the 200-yard freestyle, and Henderson took second in the 100-yard backstroke.

The Wash. U. relay teams also made their pushes for nationals this weekend, with teams making the provisional cut. Both the men and women provisionally qualified in the 800-free relay and 400-medly relay. The men and women also qualified in the 400-freestyle relay.

“Their competitive fire really showed. You just can’t prepare for that,” Shively said.

“[For] people who made A cuts, it was quite impressive this year. As far as B cuts go, we always aim to get a couple of relays and individuals, so it’s very good that we did get what we did,” Leckey, a co-captain, said. Leckey explained that in order to gain more control over nationals, the NCAA decreased the automatic qualifying times this season.

While team results at Wheaton were of secondary importance to the team after qualifying individuals for nationals, the Red and Green took second on both the men and women’s sides, losing only to Div. II Grand Valley State University in the seven-team field. Shively explained that since national qualifying times are very fast, the team uses this meet and the UAA Championships as qualifying meets since they have ample time to prepare.

The team will next be in action on Jan. 9 when Wash. U. hosts Lindenwood University in the first of four meets before UAAs. In these meets, the team will look to improve on race strategy and competition level before the UAA Championships on Feb. 11-14.

“We’re going to be in really tough training for the next two months. It’s great because you can still swim fast in season, and it can be very motivating if you do swim fast, but they’re all kind of benchmark meets as you move toward conferences to make sure that you are where you want to be,” Leckey said.