INDIANAPOLIS – A new conference championship sport will be making an appropriately-called splash this week as the era of swimming and diving officially gets underway in the Great Midwest Athletic Conference.
Four different programs will be competing in the pool on the men’s side: Alderson Broaddus, D&E, Findlay and Malone. The same schools, along with the addition of Hillsdale and Ursuline, comprise the women’s competition in the Great Midwest.
Shedding the label of an emerging sport, Davis & Elkins starts off the 2017-18 season for both genders this weekend at the West Virginia State Games in Morgantown. The following weekend will see D&E compete again with Findlay making its season debut in Michigan.
The Great Midwest and Mountain East will then merge to compete at the inaugural 2018 G-MAC/MEC Swimming & Diving Championships hosted by Malone at the C.T. Branin Natatorium in Canton on Feb. 14-17.
Similar to track and field, swimming and diving student-athletes will have their sights set on A and B-cut times and provisional standards to advance to the NCAA Division II Championships in Greensboro, N.C., from March 14-17.
Men’s Standards |
Women’s Standards
Performance charts for freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, individual medley, dives and relays events will be updated on GreatMidwestsports.com each week as the history begins to build.
Men’s & Women’s Great Midwest Athletes of the Week will also be selected and recognized throughout the regular season.
The Oilers of Findlay sent five women’s competitors to nationals last season. Four of those five return with the sophomore trio of Hanna Cederholm, Katherine Samuelson and Lauren Blanchard, with junior Amanda Stiegal. Decorated UF All-American Meri Cizmar finished out her career in 2016-17 with 200-yard backstroke First Team All-American honors; she was an NCAA DII All-American seven times. Andrew Makepeace starts his sixth season leading the UF men’s and women’s programs as head coach.
For the women, Findlay and Hillsdale finished fifth and sixth, respectively at last year’s GLIAC Championship meet. The Oilers’ men placed seventh at last year’s conference championship.
Davis & Elkins finished its postseason at the Bluegrass Mountain Championships in Charlotte, combining to shatter a total of 14 school records over the four-day event. Both men’s and women’s programs also received College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) Scholar All-America Team honors as well. Nicole Rose begins her third season coaching the Senators.
Malone had head to-head wins against Alderson Broaddus and swept Notre Dame (OH), Urbana and Hiram, while also competing at the Appalachian Swim Conference Meet. The Pioneers had a fifth-place showing by the men and the women earned seventh. Head coach Russ Hunt joined the staff in the fall of 2014. His roster composition is heavily represented by the state of Ohio; three student-athletes from Germany are also mixed in while New York and Pennsylvania are the only states with hometowns other than the Buckeye State.
Chris Chance gets his first chance to coach the Battlers of Alderson Broaddus this season. The Battlers competed at the Appalachian Swim Conference Meet in Virginia to finish out the postseason. AB’s women finished ninth and the men placed 10th. The Battlers’ women’s squad beat Notre Dame (OH) head-to-head to close out the regular season.
Ursuline also welcomes a new first-year head coach with Matt Cook. The Arrows previously competed as an associate member of the GLIAC and Cook was formerly a member of the Findlay coaching staff and was also interim head coach at Lake Erie for a stint.
Hillsdale junior Anika Ellingson is a returning NCAA qualifier in the 100 and 200 breaststroke events. Veteran head coach Kurt Kirner has completed a decade of service leading the program. He has 20 women on the 2017-18 roster this season, including 14 underclassmen with nine sophomores. The Chargers do not have a men’s swimming & diving program.