Swimming & Diving

Owls overpower Cougars in rivalry matchup

A rivalry match-up between the defending Conference USA champion, Rice University, and UH turned the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center into a whirlpool of scores this past Thursday as the UH swimming and diving team fell short of victory, moving to 0-2 on the season.

The swimmers were extremely competitive, and the Cougars advanced over the Owls in three competitions. Sophomore Michaela Hamrick finished first in the 200-yard freestyle (1:54.34) for her first collegiate win, as junior Dora Bednjanec took the win in the 100-yard backstroke (58.38) and freshman Ashley Grijalva lead the 200-yard breaststroke with a completion time of (2:22.48).

This was the 48th time in program history the teams have met and Rice finished on top in the meet, 176-117, but a challenging team is what the Cougars needed to show just how far they could advance.

“I think we raced harder and more consistently today than in the previous two meets,” said head coach Rich Murphy.

The diving team had an strong performance as the cougars lined the top of the score board going 1,2 and 3 in both of their events. In the 3-meter dive, sophomore Taylor Olanski won first place (282.60), followed by junior Danielle Shedd and redshirt freshman Micaela Bouter. In the 1-meter dive, senior Natasha Burgess took first, and again for second and third were Shedd and Bouter.

Coach Murphy wants to strengthen each individual and work on details for the next meet in Denton, where the team will compete against Texas A&M and the University of North Texas, which takes place on Halloween.

“A sign of a growing team is that we’re going to have some success and maybe have a couple of swims that get away from us that we wish were a little bit better,” Murphy said.

“In order to build… we need to take the lesson from one meet, apply it to practice, and make sure we solve those puzzles.”

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