The Michigan Daily - SportsMonday - January 11, 1999 5B
Men's swim team
drops pair of duals
By Jason Emeott
Daily Sports Writer
The last few days have been a cruel
.return to reality for the Michigan men's
swim team. One day, you're swimming
*tside in beautiful Honolulu, Hawai'i,
where heading back to school is a distant
thought..The next day, you're knee-deep
in snow worrying about buying books
for the winter semester.
A pair of pretty good California swim
teams didn't help out with the transition
back to reality, either.
On Friday, the No. 8 Wolverines lost
to No. 7 California, and then took anoth-
er defeat on Saturday to No. 4 USC in
Los Angeles. In both meets, the
Alverines lost by an identical score of
138-106.
"Both teams figured out our weakness
in the relays and hurt us there," said
Michigan coach Jon Urbanchek. "We
were a little tired from training camp."
Against California, Michigan got a
few outstanding swims to keep them in
the meet. Senior co-captain Tom
Malchow won the 200-yard freestyle
d 200-yard butterfly while sophomore
ris Thompson also won two events.
Michigan took first and second place in
the 1000- and 500-yard free with
Thompson winning them both.
Junior Mike McWha placed second in
the 1000 while freshman Tim Siciliano
was the runner-up in the 500.
The story of the meet, though, was the
performance of the Michigan divers.
Senior Brett Wilmot, junior Josh Trexler,
and sophomore Carlos Castillo swept
first, second, and third in the three-meter
springboard. Wilmot's score of 314.02
qualified him for the NCAA Zone
Diving Meet.
"We're lucky the divers performed
extremely well. They saved our face"
Urbanchek said.
In the USC meet, the bright spot of
the day was the one-two finish in the
200-yard breaststroke from sopho-
more Scott Werner and freshman Jeff
Hopwood. Michigan also got its
nearly automatic victories in the 200
fly and the 1000 free from Malchow
and Thompson.
"We were swimming against the
top teams in the country. It's good for
us because that's the type of competi-
tion we're going to see down the road
at NCAAs," said Urbanchek.
"The team is on target. Our big
challenges are over, swimming in the
Big Ten will be a little easier than in
California," said Urbanchek. "Our
main focus right now is to regain the
Big Ten crown from Minnesota in
five weeks."
For now, it's back to reality for
Urbanchek and his team.
"The weather was gorgeous-80
degrees everyday, clear, blue skies.
Now I just got done shoveling my car
out of the snow" Urbanchek said.
Swimming stilh
making waves,
qualifying times
By Jon Zemke
Daily Sports Writer
The Michigan's men's swimming and diving team as
a reputation for being a strong team nationally as fatas
producing swimmers and divers.
Tom Dolan and Eric Namesnik are two of the rhbst
prominent names to arise from the program. Both were
heavily favored in the 400 individual medley during the
1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. Dolan beat out
Namesnik by less than a second to win the gold in one of
NBC's nationally featured races.
Even after their graduations, the Michigan swim team
still puts out NCAA qualifying and consideration times
with a incredible consistency.
Senior Tom Malchow has scored NCAA consideration
times in the 200 and 500 freestyle and the 200 butterly.
Chris Thompson, a sophomore, has qualified for the
NCAAs in the 1650 free and earned a consideration time
in the 500 free.
In the breaststroke, sophomore Scott Werner nailed
down two more consideration times in the 100 and 200.
Freshman Jason Mallory has also achieved consideta-
tion for the NCAAs in the 500 free and the 400°iM
respectively.
All of these times were scored in the fall half of.the
season.
The diving team doesn't lack for success either, quali-
fying two divers, senior Brett Wilmot and junior Josh
Trexler, for both the one and three-meter diving compe-
tition.
FILE PHOTO
The Michigan men's swim team returned from training in Hawai'i and was greeted coldly - both by the
weather and by dual meet hosts USC and California.
,Gymnasts flip two ranked teams
By Nita Srivastava
Daily Sports Writer
- The seventh-ranked Michigan
women's gymnastics team is beginning
he new year on the right foot with an
upset over No. 2 Florida and No. 25
Ilinois this weekend, despite the Gators'
home advantage at the Stephen C.
'Connell Center.
, This weekend's competition was the
third straight victory for the Wolverines
oyer Florida. Michigan finished with a
score of 193.300, 3.025 points in front of
Florida and 4.550 points ahead of
Illinois. Such a significant point differ-
ence should prove to be a confidence
builder for the Wolverines in their
upcoming meets.
"It feels really good to start off the
sson this way," senior Lisa Simes said.
O is definitely a confidence builder
because it helps us to see how all of our
hard work pays off, and this will keep us
motivated through our other meets."
The Wolverines were led by junior
Sarah Cain, who finished with a tie for
second place in the all-around competi-
tion (38.500), the vault (9.825) and the
*balance beam (9.675), as well as a tie for
first place in the floor exercise (9.850).
"Sarah, everyone else and I were just
happy that we could contribute to the
overall team score - it's not really an
individual thing," Simes said.
Other top Michigan finishers in the
all-around competition included Simes
and sophomore Bridget Knaeble, scor-
ing 38.500 and 38.325, respectively.
Michigan's best event in the meet
was the vault, which was supported by
the consistently higher scores on the
apparatus. The Wolverines tallied a
team score of 48.775. The balance
beam came in a far second, lagging
.550 points behind.
Simes said, part of the reason for such
a strong performance on the vault was
that the apparatus was the last event of
the four and each competitor got two
chances to do it right.
"We were pretty fired up by the last
rotation," Simes said. "We kept the ball
rolling - we started off good and fin-
ished great."
The floor exercise and the uneven bars
apparatuses look to be the weaknesses as
of now for the Wolverines, although they
were not greatly affected by them in this
particular meet. The team scores for the
two events were 48.200 for floor exercise
and 48.100 for uneven bars.
The breaks in the routines on both
floor and bars are fixable with practice
and Michigan is focusing more on tight-
ening up the routines instead of worry-
ing about the scoring, Simes said.
Despite the lower score in uneven
bars, senior Nikki Peters managed to fin-
ish with a first-place tie on the event,
scoring a 9.750.
None of the Michigan freshmen com-
peted in the meet this weekend, although
sophomore Karina Senior performed in
her first collegiate competition and fin-
ished with a tie for fourth place on the
balance beam, scoring 9.650.
Senior was initially only supposed to
exhibition her routine, but was put into
the lineup at the last minute.
"We were all so excited for Karina,"
Simes said. "We all knew she could do it
and it was really great to see her perform
in competition as well as she does in the
gym."
The next meet for the Wolverines will
be this Friday against Minnesota in Cliff
Keen Arena at 7 p.m.
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