ISU swimmer Kristen Vanek wasn’t feeling well before she entered the 1,000-meter freestyle. Despite feeling under the weather, she ended up with a season-best time and a first-place finish.

“I warmed up and I didn’t feel very good at all,” Vanek said. “I wasn’t expecting to swim well, but I just told myself to go out there and see what I could do.”

Vanek and the rest of the ISU women’s swimming team dropped a 187-113 decision to 20th-ranked Missouri in a Big 12 Conference meet on Saturday in Columbia, Mo. With the loss, the Cyclones are now 4-3 overall. The Tigers improved to 12-1 on the season.

“I thought that they were a tough team, but I definitely feel that we raced well against them,” Vanek said. “They swam well and we swam well; some of our people were off and some of their people were on.”

With her team way behind, senior Carmella Nogar took first place in the last race of the day — the 200 individual medley — with a time of 2:07.53. “Our team had a lot of spirit the whole time,” Nogar said.

Head coach Duane Sorenson said Missouri is known for having a ‘slow’ pool. “The pool is not a particularly a fast pool. The people who swam fast times in that pool had an exceptional swim,” Sorenson said. “The reason it’s not a fast pool is just because it’s very old and the way it was designed.”

Sorenson said overall he was very pleased in his team’s effort and intensity throughout the meet. “[Missouri] is a strong team in every event and has tremendous amount of depth,” he said.

“We raced very well. The 100 butterfly was one of the events that went bang, bang, bang at the wall.”

In that event, Nogar narrowly missed another first-place finish as she finished just five hundredths of a second behind Missouri’s Liz Schoborg.

Also leading the Cyclones was Petra Plaminkova as she took first- place honors in the 100-meter breaststroke in a time of 1:06.01 and the 200-meter breaststroke in 2:20.20.

“Everybody really stepped up and [Missouri] raced a lot better than they did against Iowa,” Nogar said. “He was really happy about the effort everyone put in, but we weren’t happy with the outcome.”

Also on Saturday, the Iowa State diving team placed first in the four-team ISU Diving Invitational held at the Beyer Pool.

The Cyclones had 135 team points. Luther College was second with 66 points and Augustana College was third with 47.

Freshman Hillary Nichols took first place in the three-meter event with a score of 492.05 which became her season best.

Also getting personal bests were sophomores Gail Olson, who finished second in the three-meter event with a 473.55 score, and Alicia Adsit, who took third in same event with a 350.55 score. Olson won first place in the one-meter event.

Vanek and Sorenson said the whole team is progressing towards their goals as the Big 12 Championship approaches next month. Vanek said the team is starting to taper its training, with fewer weightlifting sessions and shorter practices. “Now is an exciting part of the season where you start worrying about every little detail in everything that you’re doing,” Nogar said.

Both the swimming and diving team will host Nebraska on Saturday at 1 p.m. at the Beyer Pool.