The ISU swimming and diving team defeated South Dakota State 184-102 last Saturday in its first home meet of the season.

“I felt really good [about the meet],” said assistant coach Kelly Nordell. “They competed very well, we swam very strong and we did a lot of the little things a lot better than we did a week ago.”

Iowa State (1-1), which lost to Minnesota on Oct. 12 in its season opener, took first place against South Dakota State in all but two events — 200 freestyle and 1,000 relay.

“I was really pleased the way that we swam,” said coach Duane Sorenson. “We had challenged our women to do a better job on our turns and we really did that the first half of the meet.”

The ISU team took its lead seven minutes in to the meet with a score of 99-32. This was thanks in part to taking first-through-third place in event one, senior 200 medley relay.

Although, Iowa State kept the lead against South Dakota State through the entirety of the meet, the coaches are vying to improve the mistakes they saw in their team.

“The second half of the meet we weren’t as crisp and sharp, so we just need to stay a little more focused as the season goes along to really keep attacking the walls,” Sorenson said.

Sorenson and Nordell both said that sharp, strong turns are something they will emphasize in practice to make sure the team remembers to make sure it preforms at its best.

“It’s real easy to revert back to old habits that you have in practice, because you train so many yards and so many laps that turns just become monotonous instead of really using their turns to go fast,” Sorenson said.

Diving coach Jeff Warrick also felt that habits from practice might have kept the team from preforming at its highest level.

“When they are doing a forward approach on a board, in practice, sometimes they’ll start to go and then stop and we have to eliminate doing a lot of that because that builds not being confident in your dive,” Warrick said.

Although proud of how the team did in its first event, the 1-meter, Warrick felt the 3-meter looked flat and that he needed to evaluate and fix the problems with its dive going forward.

“We need to work on being confident in our dives and just really looking forward to the competition,” Warrick said.

After a week of practice, Iowa State will compete at home this Friday in the Double Dual against South Dakota and Nebraska.