The Northern Arizona Lumberjacks not only opened their season with a non-traditional pentathlon format for their intrasquad meet, they mixed things up even further by making the meet in a short course meters pool.
Junior Kendall Brown won the meet, where all swims (100 meter races of each stroke plus a 200 meter IM) were assigned a point value, and the swimmer with the highest point total wins.
Brown took the title with 3,580 points, despite not winning a single event. That’s an impressive result for Brown, for whom this format is fairly ideal given the amount of racing in a short time period – she’s the two-time defending WAC Champion in the 1,650 free.
“This event is designed for a medley swimmer and is distance-oriented as Kendall and Monica (Pruett) are,” said head coach Andy Johns. “For Jori (Lindquist), it speaks a lot to where she is right now and that’s good to see. I was also really pleased with both Alexis (Juergens) and Alina (Staffeldt) breaking the old standard in the 100 fly.”
Event winners:
- 200 IM – Monica Pruett – 2:28.93
- 100 fly – Alexis Juergens – 1:03.48
- 100 back – Brooke Brittain – 1:07.81
- 100 breast – Urte Kazakeviciute – 1:15.34
- 100 free – Alina Staffeldt – 1:00.05
Among the highlights were a 1:03.48 for Alexis Juergens to win the 100 fly at this meet for the second straight year. That swim also broke the previous Meet Record of 1:03.95, with the freshman Alina Staffeldt taking 2nd, also under the old Meet Record, in 1:03.62.
That swim is just two-tenths away from Juergens’ lifetime best. She currently ranks 3rd on the program’s all-time rankings in the 100 yard fly with a 55.38, and she will be chasing the school record of 54.67 in that event this season.
