Sports Briefs

Swimming, Indoor Track, and Tennis

Swimming

—Josh Cooley

With the Conference title under their belts, several Pioneer swimmers traveled to Wheaton College last Saturday for another shot at competition. Though none of the swimmers posted national qualifying times, the 200 free relay team of Kevin Wood ’07, Peter Brown ’06, Braden Pence ’05 and Gene Petersen ’05 posted a seasonal-best time that was less than one-tenth of a second off the school record. Also, Pence, Wood and Brown went 1-2-4 in the 50 free, and Wood also took second place in the 100 fly. His time of 52.45 in the prelims was a lifetime best for him, and puts him third on the all-time list in Grinnell’s history for that event. Wood, Brown, Pence and Petersen will all return next year to gun for new school records, both individually and in relay teams. Next year, Brett McMillan ’05, who was studying abroad this semester, will be back to challenge for spots these relay teams.

“The 200 free, we should have no trouble breaking that record,” said Petersen. “The 400 free record should be a little though but I do think we should be able to clip that next year.”

Rachel Sellon ’04, the lone representative of the Mad Ducks, capped off her career as a Pioneer swimmer with a second-place finish in the 1650 free.

Divers Sarah Stayer ’06 and Country Blevins ’04 will find out on Feb. 27 and March 5 respectively whether or not they’ve been selected to compete at Nationals. Both have posted several NCAA B-cut scores, which gives them a good shot at being picked.

Indoor Track

—Kevin Byrne

Grinnell’s track teams have the weekend off from meets after some quality competition last week. Both squads participated in the University of Iowa four-way meet, sending a select group of athletes to compete in Iowa City. Grinnell’s top performers included Erin Booth ’07, Maria Stanislaw ’04, Kabenla Armah ’04, Mitch Herz ’05 and Brian Lawson ’07. Booth finished fifth in the 1500-meter race with a time of 5:30.38. Stanislaw cleared 10' for the first time in her pole-vaulting career, good for second all time in Grinnell history and second in the Midwest Conference. Armah posted the second fastest time ever at Grinnell in the 400m with a time of 50.81. Herz ran to a conference third-ranking of 1:58.49 in the 800m, while Lawson won the pole vault with a jump of 3.97m.

The exceptional performances at this meet, coupled with a week off from competition, will help prepare the atheletes for their most important meet of the indoor season, the conference championships. The Midwest Conference Championships will be hosted by Knox College on March 5-6.

“We’re definitely getting excited for conference, the culminating meet of the indoor season,” said distance runner Liz Jarvis ’04. “Right now we’re still running hard workouts, but next week we’ll probably back off a little so we’ll be fresh for competition.”

Both teams are confident going in, having performed well this season and having been through a rigorous training routine designed specifically to prepare them for the conference meet.

“We should fare well,” said distance runner Brian Menaker. “We’ll probably finish among the top two teams at the indoor conference meet. Our team is rather strong in the track events and we should have some champions in those events. The 3k, 5k, 200m and 400m will be strong events where we could have multiple medalists.”

Tennis

—Emanuel Andras

Last Saturday, in a grueling double-header that did not conclude until late in the evening, the Grinnell College tennis team enjoyed sweet revenge as they defeated two familiar foes. Early in the morning they defeated University of Chicago 4-3, and came back to finish the job against Macalester College, also by a 4-3 score.

Among the highlights of the day’s victory was the impressive play of first-year Eli Best, playing at the number two position, as he won both of his singles matches. Equally impressive was the work of his teammate Eric Ohrn—also a first-year—who won a decisive tiebreak in the second match that helped secure victory for Grinnell. The number two doubles team, composed of Brij Patnaik ’05 and Shihan Abeygunawardana ‘05, went undefeated in this event while the Best-West combo also provided a solid victory for the Pioneers in their second match.

“We are blessed with good team depth this season,” head coach Andy Hamilton says, and that was evident on Saturday as seven different players on the team contributed to Grinnell’s overall victory. Team captain Jim Finnessy ‘04 notes that “we had more players with wins this weekend than a typical team has in the whole of their varsity lineup.”

With such a wide variety of talented players, the Pioneers can feel confident heading into this weekend’s games. Grinnell will take on three solid opponents in the next two days: U of Wisconsin-Oshkosh at Coe College today at 5:30 p.m., and Cornell and Beloit at home on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m.