By Zach Waltz
Staff Writer
The men’s swimming and diving team will travel to Akron, Ohio for the Zippy Invitational at Akron University, today through Dec. 4.
The teams competing against the Bonnies are Akron, Buffalo, Clarion and Niagara. Coach Sean McNamee said the meet looks to be very competitive with all of the teams there.
“There will be enough quality people there that have different purposes for the meet to make it extremely competitive,” McNamee said. “So we’ll be able to get out of it what we’re looking to.”
Freshman Matthew Schutt said he is hopeful the team will swim well with all the extra rest from Thanksgiving break.
“The Akron Invite, from what I hear, is always a big meet for everybody to swim well in,” Schutt said. “Hopefully, we’re all going to swim some really good times and have some good competition with everybody. The rest will definitely help us swim well, but we won’t know until the results come up.”
McNamee also said the extra rest will be a crucial factor in the team’s performance at the meet.
“This meet will be a little more rested,” McNamee said. “This one we’re actually cutting back a little bit. They’ll have more energy going into this meet than any meet that we’ve had thus far in the semester. I’m sure we will have mixed results because different people react differently to extra energy.”
The team’s last meet was the Pitt Invite from Nov. 16-18. The team earned 132 points in the 17-team field. The Schutt was impressed with how well the team performed at the Invite.
“I think the team did very well,” Schutt said. “It was just good swims on everybody’s part. Coach was happy, so we were happy.”
McNamee named freshman backstroker and freestyler Michael Pilyugin as performer of the meet. The Cooperstown , N.Y. native finished second in the 100-yard backstroke and was also a part of the 200-yard freestyle relay, the 400-yard medley relay, the 200-yard medley relay, the 800-yard freestyle relay, and the 400-yard freestyle relay teams.
“As for individual performers, freshman Michael Pilyugin was performer of the meet. He was very solid,” McNamee said.
McNamee said he felt very encouraged by what he saw in the meet and the team competed at a very high level even though they were faced with the extra challenge of training while at the meet.
“We had a very good meet actually,” McNamee said. “We went down with a unique perspective in that we were training through it. We actually were doing some practices while we were at the competition. It’s something we haven’t done, but we swam very well. It was an extremely successful weekend over the three days there and we competed very well. I was very encouraged by what I saw down there.”
