Women take fourth, men fifth at final Southwest Conference Championships

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by David Gordon

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The men's and women's swimming teams ended 10 years of Southwest Conference Division-I competition at Texas A&M University last week with the same finishes that they had at last year's meet.

The women's team placed fourth out of the six teams represented. The men's team placed fifth out of the five teams.

The University of Texas and Southern Methodist University, perennial swimming powerhouses, finished first and second in the men's and women's competitions, respectively.

There were several individual highlights at the meet, and several school records were broken.

Junior Jon Armstrong swam a 2:06.07 in the 200 breaststroke. The time broke the school record and was good for a 10th-place finish.

Senior Steve Quance broke his own school record in both the 50 and 100 freestyle.

His times of 20.69 and 45.13 earned ninth and eighth, respectively.

The 100 time earned NCAA consideration for the national meet.

Other top performers on the men's side included freshman David Henry and junior Alex Fuller in the 1,650-freestyle.

Henry swam a 16:20.82, placing eighth.

Fuller earned ninth place with a time of 16:31.88.

The women's team had several swimmers earn NCAA consideration.

Junior Ginny Farmer was the team's top performer at the meet.

She swam consideration times in both the 200 and 400 individual medleys.

She finished eighth in the 200 with a 2:06.72 and third in the 400 with a 4:21.69.

She also swam a 17:05.41 in the 1,650 freestyle, finishing in sixth place.

Sophomore Cory Teague placed sixth and earned consideration in the 100 butterfly with a time of 56.49.

Sophomore Carrie Covington placed sixth in the 200 freestyle and eighth in the 100 freestyle.

Sophomore Heather Draper placed sixth in the 100 backstroke with a time of 57.22. She also swam a consideration time and broke the school record in the preliminaries of the 200 backstroke with a time of 2:01.49. In the finals, she swam a 2:04.68 to finish eighth.

The 200 medley relay team of junior Hilary Grabe, freshman Jennifer Moriarty, Teague and Covington broke the school record with a third- place finish of 1:44.66.

Next year promises to be a new beginning for the team when it joins the Western Athletic Conference. Where Texas and SMU dominated SWC swimming, the 16-school WAC should be more competitive.

"The WAC has many more teams than the SWC, so it will offer a broad spectrum of competition," Quance said. "I think it is exciting for the team to enter an entirely new area of competition in which it can improve and thrive."

Head Coach Kris Wingenroth agrees."We will be much more competitive," she said. "SMU will be the strongest team, but it will be a competition for second."

The biggest difference may be on the men's side where several schools have partially-funded teams like Rice. The men's team does not have as many full scholarships as the women's team.

"We will always have trouble competing against fully-funded schools," Fuller said. "The partially-funded schools will be more in our league."

This item appeared in the Sports section of the February 23, 1996 issue.

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