CHARLES PRITCHARD
Staff Writer
The Natatorium in Steele Hall stays warm all year round, regardless of the frigid winter temperatures outside. There was a lot of heat during the Blue Devil Invitational — not just from the heated pool.
Eight schools from around the country came to Fredonia; each team was excited to be there and show everyone just what it had to offer.
The schools visiting included the following: the Baldwin-Wallace Yellow Jackets, John Carroll Blue Streaks, and Oberlin Yeomen from Ohio; the Allegheny Gators, Pennsylvania State Behrend Lions and Pitt-Bradford Panthers from Pennsylvania; the Wheeling Jesuit Cardinals from West Virginia; and the SUNY Brockport Golden Eagles.
The loudest voices and the strongest cheerers of the Invitational came from the swimmers themselves as they stood at the poolside, watching and shouting encouraging words as their teammates competed for the best time.
But even before that, the excitement was palpable the closer the Invitational came.
“I like to have really strong competition,” said junior diver Meghan Bartlett. “We’ve never gone up against these schools, so we don’t know what to expect. It’s so exciting.”
With that excitement came preperation. Even during the final hours, the women’s swimming and diving team was doing everything it could to prepare itself.
“We’ve been doing a lot to get ready for this,” said senior swimmer Samantha Rokos. “All of our training is focused on fast swimming. We’ve implemented a new weight training program into our sets this year and it’s definitely helped a lot.”
When other athletes say that they have been doing weight training, one could assume they’ve meant that they’ve been lifting weights and toning their bodies. But when swimmers say they’ve been doing weight training, they mean something entirely else.
They’re swimming with weights on.
“We call it ‘Power Tower.’ It’s a big bucket and we put water in it and attach a belt and you actually swim with that. That’s pretty hard,” Rokos said with a laugh.
That’s putting lightly. But the proof is in the results.
During the first session of the Invitational on Friday night, Rokos set a new school record during the 200-yard individual medley (IM) with a time of 2:11:10.
“Rokos’ 200 IM was very noteworthy. It was a school record breaking performance and she won the event,” said Head Coach Arthur Wang. “It is one of the top times in the SUNYAC thus far. She swam that twice in less than three hours. That’s a lot to ask for in such a short amount of time.”
The competition was quite heated through the Invitational. On the first day, Fredonia was ranked fifth in the rankings. But after a little help from Bartlett winning the women’s 3-meter, Fredonia moved from fifth to third.
At the end of the Invitational, the women’s team finished fifth with 387 points, topping Brockport, Baldwin Wallace, Penn. State Behrend and Pitt-Bradford. John Carroll University placed first with 697 points.