The Iowa Hawkeyes welcomed in a midwestern women’s quad meet on Saturday between themselves and the Indiana Hoosiers, the Illinois Illini, and the Missouri Tigers of the SEC; and a tri-meet against just Indiana and Missouri on the men’s side.
Indiana swept every dual meet with 3 wins for the women and 2 for the men, including victories of 170-121 in the women’s meet over Missouri, 170-126 over Iowa in the women’s meet, 174-123 over the Missouri men, and 195-102 over the Iowa men.
Iowa’s women swam very well also, and topped Missouri 164-135. The Missouri women did pick up 5 event wins, but Iowa showed off a new level of depth to better them in the scoring.
Women’s Meet
Indiana kicked things off with a 1:41.22-1:41.66 win over the Missouri women in the 200 medley relay. This is probably both teams’ best relay, and each had a really huge leg. For Indiana, that was Brooklynn Snodgrass, who led off in a 25.14 backstroke split to give the Hoosiers a 1.8 second lead headed into the breaststroke leg. Missouri, however, made most of that up on the breaststroke and butterfly legs, including a 23.44 fly split from Dani Barbiea.
Coming home, though, it was Indiana senior, and former Arizona Wildcat, Kait Flederbach who out-split Anna Patterson 22.64-22.88 to finish off the Indiana win.
The three big splitters mentioned above all went head-to-head at least one other time in this meet, in the women’s 50 free. In that race, Flederbach won in 23.15, followed by Barbiea in 23.28 and Snodgrass in 23.75.
Flederbach also took an official win in the 200 free in 1:51.41, beating Illinois senior Courtney Pope and her 1:51.81. Though not represented in the final score, Illinois swam extremely well throughout this meet: their best meet this year aside from their mid-year invite.
The top finisher in that race, however, was Lindsay Vrooman, who wound up as an exhibition non-scoring swim, out of the other heat in 1:48.82, and another Hoosier Cynthia Pammett took 2nd in 1:50.69 in another exhibition win.
Flederbach didn’t swim the 100 free in between her big 50 and 200 points, but Barbiea and Snodgrass both did, with Barbiea winning in 50.43 and Snodgrass placing 2nd in 51.10. Iowa’s Olivia Kabacinksi took 3rd in 51.25.
Barbiea’s 2nd win came in the 100 yard fly with a 54.04 to beat Indiana’s surprise freshman Gia Dalesandro (54.76) and Iowa’s Haley Gordon (56.29).
Snodgrass didn’t get any individual wins on the day, as she didn’t swim either backstroke race that are her specialties. She did, however, get two relay victories: in addition to the 200 medley, she anchored a 3:25.14 in the 400 free relay that also won, splitting 50.91 (Flederbach was 50.28).
Taking a surprise 2nd place in that relay was Illinois in 3:27.36; they got a 51.6 from senior Jessi Holz as their best split.
Missouri got another win in the women’s 100 breaststroke, where freshman Katherine Ross was a 1:02.45 to beat Indiana’s Bronwyn Pasloski (1:02.76). Pasloski took the 200 yard race in 2:18.30 after Ross, who stopped the clock in a 1:15.4, was disqualified.
Another Indiana freshman, Olivia Barker, ran away with the women’s 200 fly in 2:00.33. She was out in a  57.4, the fastest opening split, and closed in 1:02.8, the fastest closing split. Her teammates Bailey Pressey (2:02.22) and Brenna MacLean (2:02.25) took 2nd-and-3rd, respectively, but they exhibitioned to leave Iowa’s Becky Stoughton (2:04.68) and Haley Gordon (2:04.97).
That was the story of the night for the Iowa women. Though they didn’t win a single race overall to Missouri’s 5, in this quad-meet format teams’ results are matched up head-to-head, and Iowa in many cases had multiple finishers ahead of Missouri’s top swimmer, though behind the winner from Indiana.
In addition to the 200 free Lindsay Vrooman took two other wins for the Hoosiers as well. First she swam a 9:56.57 in the 1000 free to hold on to a narrow win over Iowa’s Becky Stoughton (9:57.59), just a few minutes before the already-mentioned 200 free win.
Closer to the end of the meet, Vrooman would win again, taking the 500 free in 4:55.13, with Stoughton again finishing 2nd in 4:58.38.
What wound up to be a good meet for the National Teamer almost wasn’t: she missed the team transport from the hotel to the pool, but fortunately for her, former Iowa swimmer Devon Meeks works at the hotel that Indiana was staying at. Putting rivalries aside for the day, Meeks wound up driving Vrooman to the pool.
Missouri’s other two wins came on the 1-meter and 3-meter springboards, which were swept by Lauren Reedy in the absence of All-American teammate Loren Figueroa.
Illinois’ lone individual win came from junior Allison Meng in the 100 back, which she won over a pair of talented Indiana swimmers. The Hoosiers’ Justine Ress was 2nd in 55.58 and Allie Day was 3rd in 55.74.
Men’s Meet
The Missouri men kicked the meet off with a win in the men’s 200 medley relay, swimming a 1:28.95 to beat Indiana’s 1:29.35. In a back-and-forth battle, the Hooisers held the lead early with a 22.15 lead-off split from James Wells. After getting a little back on the breaststroke leg (Mark Conroy out-split Cody Miller 24.8-25.0 on the breaststroke leg), Missouri took their 1st lead on the butterfly leg.
On that fly swim, Logan Mosley was a 21.03 to pull well in front of Indiana junior Steve Schmuhl, who split 22.13. Indiana has tried a lot of different combinations on their medley relays in the last year, some that include Schmuhl swimming fly, and some that include using some combination of Tanner Kurz and Cody Miller on the middle two legs.
There were a ton of great, well-known breaststrokers in this meet, but it was a lesser-known, though very good, Roman Trussov who won the men’s 100 breaststroke. The Iowa sophomore took the title in 54.52, beating out Missouri’s Sam Tierney (55.09), Indiana’s Cody Miller (55.52), and Indiana’s Tanner Kurz (56.30) for the win.
Tierney fought Trussov harder in the 200 breaststroke, and made up almost a full second in the last 50 yards to win in 1:59.53. Trussov took 2nd in 1:59.77, and Miller was 3rd in 2:01.72.
Miller’s lone individual win of the meet wound up coming in the 100 fly, which he took in 49.12 over Iowa’s Jack Allen (49.36).
The aforementioned butterflier Schmuhl was more back into his primary element in the 200 fly later in the meet, which he won in 1:47.36. That’s easily the best time he’s seen in a dual meet this season. Indiana was 1-2 in that race, with freshman Max Irwin taking 2nd in 1:49.14 and Missouri’s Mack Darragh 3rd in 1:49.20.
Indiana again went 1-2 in the men’s 100 back, with Wells winning in 47.54 and Ress taking 2nd in 47.69. Iowa’s Dustin Rhoads (48.17) and Grant Betulius (49.82) filled in the next two spots behind them.
Ress, in his better of the two NCAA backstroke distances, won the 200 running away in 1:44.70. He really put the gas on over the last 50 yards to pull away from Missouri freshman Carter Griffin (1:46.68). Ress also won the 200 IM by a similarly significant margin in 1:48.32. Darragh was 2nd there in 1:51.86.
Indiana’s Jackson Miller, who came to Bloomington as a very versatile 50-500 freestyler, won the 500 free in 4:30.37. So far this season, he’s leaned more toward the middle-distance side of his range than the sprint side.
While they’re still working out some kinks in their sprint fly group, Indiana’s sprint free group has solved their similar situation pretty quickly thanks to freshman Anze Tavcar. Tavcar won the 50 free in 20.18 and the 100 free in 44.21. That 50 free is a career-best on a flat start for the 19-year old Slovenian import, and the 100 free missed by just under two-tenths of a second.
I’m not understanding why the photo with this article is of a University of Arizona swimmer. Did I miss something?
PAC12BACKER, that’s Kait Flederbach. Former U of A swimmer, now at IU.
Thank you. I missed that reference stated within the article.
In hindsight…I probably would’ve picked a different swimmer, one wearing an Indiana cap.
BUTTTT, I didn’t. Alas.
haha to be honest, i didn’t remember her name xD
There were more DQs in this meet than I have ever seen in a dual meet. I’m not entirely sure what would cause that. It seems like swimmers that normally are not DQed wouldn’t change their stroke in a dual meet but, who knows?…
I’d like to add that Kait flederbach also missed the bus 🙂
See, I thought that was true….but the Vroomonster was the only one who got called out on Twitter by Devon.
So on the day, we have bus 2, Indiana seniors 4? We’ll call it a win.
Congrats Hoosiers!!!
Is Matt Gerth not swimming for IU this season? I followed him when he swam for Carmel HS in Carmel, IN.
Flederbach actually came 3rd in the 200 free, winning the first heat, but Vrooman and Pammett were first and second overall from the second heat!
You’re right – missed the exhibitioned swims on that one. Will fix now.