Despite tremendous efforts by several individuals, the Iowa State women’s swimming team was unable to make up any ground at the Big 12 championships in College Station, Texas Feb. 17-19.

The Cyclones totaled 242.5 points in placing last out of the six Big 12 schools participating at the meet. Texas, ranked 13th nationally, won the championship with a total of 914.5 points.

Iowa State came up just shy of its goal to top the 251 point total achieved by last year’s squad, but Cyclone swimmer Amber McDowell said a talented field of competition masked the vast improvement displayed by her team.

“If we would have taken the times we had this year for last year we would have easily beaten the total,” McDowell said. “In a way we did achieve our goal, just not in a numerical aspect.”

McDowell was one of several Cyclones to have a break through performance at the meet when she placed second in the 200-yard butterfly with a school record time of 2:01.71.

“I was really happy with my time,” McDowell said. “It was a great race between me and first place winner Clara Ho [of Texas A&M].”

Iowa State also received strong efforts from junior Marie-Eve Tremblay and freshman Carmella Nogar. Tremblay placed seventh in the 200 breaststroke with a time of 2:20.54, while Nogar finished 14th in the 200 backstroke when she clocked in at 2:05.50. Nogar also set school records in both the 200 and 400 individual medley events, and the Cyclones as a team set a total of six school records.

“We had people dropping times left and right,” ISU senior A-Lisa Miles said. “It was really neat to see.”

Miles was one of those individuals, taking four seconds off of her personal best 200 breaststroke time as she finished ninth in the consolation finals with a time of 2:20.54.

“It was an awesome race,” Miles said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better way to go out.”

The Cyclone diving squad was also represented well thanks to a strong outing from junior Thea Hoeg. Hoeg made consolation in all three diving events (1-meter, 3-meter and platform) and broke her own school record score of 260.3 in the platform event when she came through with a point total of 274.85

“I was extremely happy with the scores I was getting throughout the meet,” Hoeg said. “I felt more confident than I have all year.”

ISU diving coach Jeff Warrick said he was proud of the consistency displayed by Hoeg and his other two divers Allison Wagoner and Jennifer Maupin. He said the aggressiveness all three divers displayed in their dives will be a big boost for them as they prepare to compete at the NCAA Zone 5 qualification meet held at College Station in two weeks.

“We have an advantage because the meet is held at Texas A&M and our conference meet was just held there,” Warrick said. “The scoring will be tough, but I’m looking for confident and aggressive dives from each of them.”

Though the Cyclones are done for the year as a team, Iowa State will send a few swimmers to Minnesota next weekend to compete in a time-trial meet.

Cyclone head coach Duane Sorenson said the meet will give swimmers a chance to try and set personal best times in certain events. More importantly for Iowa State, however, it will give McDowell and Tremblay a chance to automatically qualify for the NCAA championships held March 16-18 at Indionapolis, Ind.

According to Sorenson, McDowell’s 200 butterfly and Tremblay’s 100 breaststroke times are just shy of automatic NCAA qualification.

“We need Amber to go a little faster and for Marie to take one to 1/2 of a second off of her time to be automatically invited,” Sorenson said.