On Friday, the Texas A&M men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams were unable to beat in-state rival the University of Texas, with the women losing 165-133 and the men falling 181-111.
With the loss, both teams move to 1-1 on the season.
“You never like to lose, but we had some really good swims,” women’s coach Steve Bultman said. “I was very pleased with how we raced in a lot of races. We were better than what we were two weeks ago and that’s where we talked about we want to improve. We want to make progress, we want to fix some of the things that we didn’t do right two weeks ago and be moving forward because we are hosting our invite in three weeks and that’s the important meeting this fall.”
On the women’s side, the Aggies were able to start off ahead thanks to a win in the 200 medley relay by the team of Raena Eldridge, Anna Belousova, Emma Carlton and Golf Sapianchai. Belousova would also finish first in the 100-yard breaststroke (1:02.02) and 200-yard breaststroke (2:14.38).
In the men’s competition, the Longhorns finished first in nine of the 11 races. The lone Aggie to finish in first was sophomore Shaine Casas, who placed first in the 100-yard backstroke (1:43.36).
After the match, men’s coach Jay Holmes said despite the total score, his team managed to swim well.
“The crazy thing about this meet is we actually swam pretty well in places,” Holmes said. “We would have beaten almost any other team out there, we just didn’t match up with Texas. Whenever we were coming off the walls, you could tell that we were tired. Meanwhile, Texas was bouncing off the walls like kangaroos. So a lot of it was just us getting our legs under us, and that’s just going to come later in the year for us. This is the best team I’ve ever seen from Texas in early November. They’re just way ahead of everybody else.”
In the diving side of competition, the Aggies were able to fare pretty well against tough competition. Haley Allen and Alyssa Clairmont finished second and third in the women’s one-meter dive, while Charlye Campbell finished first in the three-meter dive.
On the men’s side, Kurtis Matthews finished third in the three-meter dive. Matthews also finished second in the one-meter dive, leading freshman Victor Povzner, who finished third. and Victor Povzner finished second and third in the one meter dive, with Matthews finishing less than a point shy of first place’s Jordan Windle.
“The results weren’t as bad as they looked with our diving, I thought they did really well,” Diving coach Jay Lerew said. “Kurtis had it in the bag in the last event, the door was open. I was real proud of Charlye though. And the women, there’s a girl from Texas is the NCAA champion, so she just picked off the NCAA champion. That’s going to be a good confidence booster for the next competition.”
Both Aggies teams return to action this weekend, as they face their first matches of the season away from Aggieland. The men’s swimming and both diving teams will travel to Massachusetts to face Boston University on Nov. 7 and Harvard and Duke on Nov. 9. The women’s swimming team will also see action on Nov. 9, traveling to Houston to take on Rice.