Swimmers and divers take fifth place at conference meet

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Junior Imelda Wistey, comes up for air and prepares herself for her last stroke in the 200 breaststroke relay during the dual meet against South Dakota and Nebraska on Friday, Oct. 26, at Beyer Hall. Wistey finished with the best time in the event of 2:22:63. The meet results ended with Cyclones defeating South Dakota 246-53 but falling to Nebraska 122.5-176.5.

John Barry

After a season of ups and downs, the ISU swimming and diving team was unable to pull of any last-second miracles at the Big 12 Championship meet in Austin, Texas, this past week.

The Cyclones finished with a fifth-place finish as a team out of the five schools in the competition. Texas took first and dominated the meet with a team score of 1,051, which was almost double of the next closest team, West Virginia, with 576. 

Heading into the weekend, Iowa State was ahead of Kansas by 20 points, but would see the lead fade away after the Saturday, March 2, 2013, events. 

“Our women swam very fast and we had a lot of personal-bests,” said swimming coach Duane Sorenson in a news release. “But unfortunately, the swims were not fast enough. We had a lot of ninth-place swimmers and not enough people getting into finals, which cost us fourth place and the shot at catching up with TCU.”

Both Bre Loeschke and Imelda Wistey set new school records at the meet.

Wistey broke the 100-meter breaststroke record on Friday, March 1, with a time of 1:01.35, which was only good enough for third place in the event, however. Laura Sogar of Texas won the event with a time of 58.67.

On Saturday, Loeschke set the school record in the 200-meter backstroke with a time of 1:56.90. She took second in the event behind Texas’ Sarah Denninghoff.

“Imelda setting the school record and swimming to her best, that was really special,” Sorenson said. “She has really been wanting that since she has came to Iowa State.”

Amanda Paulson also broke a school record on Thursday, Feb. 28, that she had already set in the 50-freestyle for Iowa State.

As for diving, Elyse Brouillette took the Cyclones to a fifth-place finish on platform with a score of 212.25. Also in the finals was Marley Dobyns, who took sixth with a score of 201.55.

Brouillette qualified for the NCAA Zone 5 Diving Qualifications meet in Houston on March 11-13.

“As we look back at the entire meet, I was very proud of the way we swam,” Sorenson said. “We found out that we can compete with everybody in the Big 12. With just a little more work, we can be right up there.”