Colorado State vs Wyoming (W)
- Saturday, November 5, 2022
- Fort Collins, Colo.
- SCY (25 yards)
- Results
- Team Score: CSU 169, Wyoming 131
Courtesy: CSU Athletics
FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Facing a rival, it never hurts to have a hammer. Someone who when a coach enters them in the race, they feel the likelihood of a victory is extremely high.
Now add a second.
In the past two weeks, Lucy Matheson and Lexie Trietley have provided the Colorado State women’s swimming and diving team an effective 1-2 punch in the lanes and Saturday they helped nail down a 169-131 dual victory over rival Wyoming on senior day at Moby Pool.
“Oh yeah. You feel very confident,” CSU coach Christopher Woodard said. “I don’t think any of our staff, we don’t go to kids before events and put the weight of the world on their shoulders. They’re very cognizant of what needs to be done. Sometimes we take maybe a softer approach, but with those two, I can look them dead in the eye and know you’ve got this, this is taken care of already. I don’t need to say anything.”
The victory advanced the Rams’ dual win streak to 18 consecutive, and it was the second win in a row over their most bitter rival. While last year’s meet came down to the wire in Laramie, that wasn’t the case this season, though the Cowgirls did provide a bit of tension at times.
Junior Lucy Matheson has won her past seven individual events, winning both the 100- and 200-yard backstrokes and the 100 butterfly on Saturday, the same three races she won the week before as the Rams clipped Denver. Alexis Trietley, a freshman, has never lost a collegiate 100 freestyle in four meets, and she’s won the 50 free in all three duals the Rams have had this season.
For both, this was their first experience with the Border War, and Matheson made sure she knew exactly what it was all about.
“I had a conversation with Woody about it,” Matheson said. “We were talking about DU and rivalries, and I was like, can you give me a rundown on the relationship we have with Wyoming? So, he really got me amped up and I started to understand how big a deal it was. We’ve been talking about Wyoming since the first practice – we’ve got Wyoming on Nov. 5, be ready. I wouldn’t say it’s a hatred, but definitely a rivalry and all these girls have all these stories from Wyoming, so it just carries through, and I feel like I’m a Ram through and through.”
Coming off last week’s win, Matheson said the anticipation really kept building through the week, and at Friday’s practice, it was started to really boil. She helped the team win the 200 medley relay (along with Katie McClelland, Amanda Hoffman and Trietley), then came back in the fourth race to lead a 1-2 finish with Liza Lunina in the 100 backstroke.
She did the brunt of her work in the back half of the meet, winning the 200 backstroke and 100 fly, where she was part of a 1-2 finish again, this time with Hoffman coming on strong. Based on her current run of results, it’s easy to guess she’s feeling really good in the water.
“My fly feels good, even though I’ve only raced the 100 fly,” she said. “It’s felt really good at practice, and hopefully I can do the 200 fly soon to see where I’m at. My turns and underwaters, I’ve been working on a lot, and I see some major improvement there.”
The 100 fly is a race Hoffman loves, but she’s produced better results in the 200 portion of the event, which she won on the day, with teammate Kendra Preski in second. Hoffman, who owns the fourth-fastest 200 fly in school history at 2:00.63, has always been a beast in the longer event in college, but now she’s starting to find her pace in the 100 as well.
At practice, the swimmers get divided into distance and sprint workouts, and during last season, Hoffman started splitting time between the two groups. She’s done the same a bit this year, and Woodard has been ecstatic with her aggressiveness and the way she attack the start of the 100 fly.
“The 200 fly is my baby, but the 100 fly, it’s my favorite event. It’s the most fun for me,” Hoffman said. “Being able to find that speed and have Lucy there as someone to aim towards and be there for me is really, really nice. I’m pr oud of us for going 1-2 in that. I have a love-hate relationship with the 200 fly, because it’s really hard, but I love it. Sometimes it hurts, and that’s my love-hate. Sometimes it’s not so bad.
“Being able to learn how to sprint fly when I’ve always been an endurance butterflier has really started to shine for me this season. It’s been really, really nice. Woody has really helped me work on my sprint fly.”
Colorado State won 10 of the 16 events, including the two relays, which is always important. Anika Johnson won the 200 free for the third dual in a row, with Erin Dawson’s victory in the 400 individual medley helping to push the final result to a more comfortable level. The Rams capped it with the 200 free team of Trietley, Johnson, Megan Hager and Azalea Shepherd.
There were times when the Cowgirls started to make things interesting, but that’s when Woodard felt his team started to show its true colors. Hager, Lunina, Shepherd, Maya White, Sarah Mundy, Katie McClelland, Claire Wright, Emily Chorpening, Emma Breslin and Hannah Sykes all had strong finishes to provide depth points, and all four divers scored point on one of the two boards, with Braeden Shaffer scoring on both.
“We had a meeting and we talked about rivals Friday, and we also kind of preach swimming and staying in your own lane, but the reality is, and there’s science and data to back it up, rivals make us better,” Woodard said. “So, it’s just getting the team to focus on accepting the challenge and accepting the challenge is coming out on the other end knowing something about yourself maybe you didn’t know. Maybe I’m tougher than I thought I was? Maybe I’m faster than I thought I was at this point of the season? It’s a good thing.”
As well as a good day. For the eight seniors who were honored before, it signaled the reality it’s coming to an end sooner rather than later. When they arrived, the Rams had not beaten the Cowgirls in a decade, and now they’re about to exit with successive wins.
Hoffman admitted had her knotted up, a blend of excitement and nerves which didn’t start to manifest into determination until warmup.
After that?
“It was just game on,” she said. “It feels so good. I remember last year it was a nail-biter and it came down the bitter end, and it was one of my best meets, and so was this one. We have such a rivalry with Wyoming, and it’s a big meet. We’ve even talked about it being second to conference in our lineup. It’s really nice going out with a win at our home meet, at our home meet for our seniors. It’s amazing so many of us have stuck with it. Being with these ladies the last four years … I cannot be more grateful for them.”
Courtesy: Wyoming Athletics
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (11/5/22) – The University of Wyoming women’s swimming & diving team dropped a road dual at Colorado State on Saturday inside Moby Pool. The Cowgirls fell 169-131.
Wyoming won a total of seven events on the day. Of those seven events, the Cowgirls took 1-2 in three of those events.
Maisyn Klimczak gave the Cowgirls a sweep in the distance freestyle events. She won the 500-yard freestyle after registering a time of 5:09.48.
Carly Palmer won the 100-yard breaststroke, boasting a time of 1:03.94. Brynlee Busskohl wasn’t far behind at 1:04.55.
Alicia Gonzalez claimed a first place in the 3-meter competition, tallying 266.40 points, while Nettie Knapton took second with a score of 258.15. Gonzalez also won the 1-meter event, scoring 264.00 points.
Sydney McKenzie capped the wins for Wyoming, taking the crown in the 200-yard breaststroke. She topped the field after clocking in at 2:22.01.
Both the men’s and women’s teams wrap up its fall schedule in a couple weeks. Wyoming travels to the SMU Invitational in Dallas, Texas, from Nov. 17-19.
