It was an up-and-down day for the women’s swimming & diving team from San Diego State University on Saturday, but when all the dust had settled, the Aztecs came away as the 2015 Mountain West Conference Champions for the 2nd time in 3 seasons.
Despite receiving only three out of 10 first-place votes in the pre-meet coaches’ poll, San Diego State pulled off a mild upset of the defending champion Boise State Broncos by 25 points at the final tally
Team Scores
- San Diego State – 704.5
- Boise State – 679.5
- Nevada – 554
- Wyoming – 420
- UNLV – 312.5
- Air Force – 281
- San Jose State – 222
- Fresno State – 187
- New Mexico – 180
- Colorado State – 172.5
The two events that really carried the Aztecs over the hump on this day were the 100 free and 200 fly mid-way through the session.
First, in the 100 free, sophomore All-American Anika Apostalon won in 47.88, just missing her Conference Record of 47.73 set at this same meet last year, and teammate Chelsea Bailey took 2nd in 49.06.
Along with a third A-finalist, Whitney Weisz, in 49.78, the Aztecs were able to actually extend their lead by a few points against a very deep Boise State sprint group.
While that 100 free was important to the cause, if one race were pinpointed for this title, it might just have been the 200 fly two events later.
Last year, San Diego State had only one scorer in the event, Frida Berggren, who was 10th in 2:00.97, scoring 7 points.
This year, the team but three swimmers (two sophomores and a freshman) into the A-final, led by the conference champion Berggren in 1:58.08, and scored 53 total points. That gave them a much-needed margin heading into the platform diving finals, and an all-but-DQ standing going into the 400 free relay.
While official results don’t show reaction times, to the naked eye, San Diego State took that “no false starts” to heart, and wound up finishing safely in 3rd in 3:18.43 to secure the team title.
Meanwhile, that race was won by the Boise State Broncos in 3:16.88, with the team of Brittany Aoyama, Samantha Wicks, Katelyn Martin, and Jessica Bottelberghe, who were within three-tenths of a second of San Diego State’s conference record from last season. That time leaves the Broncos just four-tenths of a second away from an NCAA Automatic time standard in that relay, leaving them with a decision to find a last-chance meet to sneak under the marker.
In other day-4 events, Air Force once again dominated a distance freestyle event, led by sophomore Genevieve Miller. She added the 1650 free title to an earlier win in the 500, with this one coming in a new Mountain West Conference record of 16:13.01.
Sara Menke again played the role of best supporting distance swimmer, earning another 2nd-place swim, this time with a 16:28.38.
In the 200 back, San Jose State freshman Morgan McCormick took down another Meet Record, swimming a 1:54.13 to put two seconds between herself and runner-up Nicolette Cannon (1:56.20) of Boise State. Three of the top four swimmers in that event were freshman: Jaeger Turner of Nevada was 3rd in 1:56.33 and Colleen Humel of San Jose State was 4th in 1:58.06.
The other swimming event champion on the day was Nevada’s Yawen Li, who swam a 2:08.49, coupling with teammate Krysta Palmer, who won the women’s platform event in a new conference record score of 343.40, to give the Wolf Pack two event titles on the last day of competition.
Showing off the depth and breadth of the Mountain West Conference, on the last day of the meet, three conference records were broken, and none of them were done by the top two teams in the league: SDSU or Boise State.
