USD SHOOTOUT
- January 5, 2018
- San Diego, CA
- Results
- Scores
- Nevada 72, San Diego 19
- Nevada 67, San Jose State 23
- Nevada 71, Dixie State 20
- San Jose State 59, San Diego 32
- San Jose State 68, Dixie State 23
- San Diego 65, Dixie State 26
The University of San Diego hosted three teams on Saturday in a meet that featured a unique sprint event showdown format, with the University of Nevada Wolfpack coming away as the top overall squad. Donna Depolo won two events, and Josien Wijkhujis earned a first and two other second place finishes to lead the way for Nevada, Reno, topping host University of San Diego, San Jose State, and Dixie State.
The meet featured a handful of events you would find in a “traditional” mid-season meet—including the 400 yard medley relay, 1000 yard freestyle, 200 yard IM, and 400 yard freestyle relay—but spiced things up with a three-round elimination-style format for sprint 50s in all four strokes. The first round of each sprint 50 featured full entries from each team, with the top two swimmers from each squad making it to the second round. That group of eight would be whittled down to four in a second round of racing, followed by a “championship final” consisting of the fastest swimmer from each squad.
San Jose State actually captured three of the four sprint showdown events, with junior Gabi Vieira taking the 50 yard butterfly (25.65), freshman Shelby Mullendore winning the 50 yard backstroke (27.16), and freshman Maddy Sailors touching first in the 50 yard freestyle (24.08). Wijkhujis, a freshman from the Netherlands, touched second in both the 50 yard butterfly and 50 yard backstroke for Nevada.
The Wolfpack women touched first in the remaining six events. Depolo touched first by a full 1.5 seconds in the 50 breaststroke (29.56), and also blew open the 400 medley relay to open the meet with a 1:03.96 split that was more than 4 seconds faster than any other teams’ swimmer. Lindsey Soule (1000 freestyle, 10:30.38), Andressa Cholodovskis Lima (2:05.13), and Caitlyn McHugh (200 free, 1:55.53) were the other individual winners on the day. McHugh also swam a critical third leg on the winning 400 yard freestyle relay (3:34.46) to close out the meet).
