Pool records set in Lopes season's home debut

Saturday, December 9

Phoenix, Ariz.

1 p.m.

Grand Canyon

188

Arizona Christian

Photo by: Nate Cochran

12/9/2023 8:46:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving, Women's Swimming and Diving

Schedule set next for in-state duals with Arizona State, Arizona

By: Nathan Peters

The Grand Canyon swimming and diving teams completed their first home meet of the season with five dual wins on Saturday.

The Lopes women led the charge by taking down Northern Colorado in a battle where GCU won 173-125. GCU men and women also swept Arizona Christian and Ottawa (Arizona).

"This was a really good win for our women," Lopes head coach Steve Schaffer said of defeating WAC foe Northern Colorado. "We had a good, but not great meet last week at the Miami Invitational, and we wanted to see how the team would respond to the challenge of a strong opponent this week."

The Lopes responded by setting five pool records at Fr Edward A. Reese Aquatic Center in Phoenix.

"Northern Colorado is a very well-coached team and was ranked second in the WAC, just ahead of us," Schaffer said. "We really stepped up and raced very well today. And as the women like to say, they understood the assignment."

Prior to this weekend, Northern Colorado was unbeaten in WAC action.

GCU sophomore Paula Martinez Moreno took first in the 200-yard butterfly with a pool record time of 1 minute, 59.26 seconds. The previous pool record was also set by Martinez Moreno almost a year ago to the day, but Saturday's time was nearly a second faster.

Senior teammate Raphaela Nakashima also set a pool record of 1:01.04 in the 100 breaststroke. The new record was only 0.01 seconds better than the record time.

To start the day, the 200 medley relay also set a school record with its first-place showing of 1:40.66. The team included graduate student Briana Rittenbach, Nakashima, Martinez Moreno and junior Maria Brunlehner.

"The men had a chance to either swim off events or to try to improve on the event they swam last week, and we had a lot of very fast swims today," Schaffer said. "We got a lot of good insights in how we need to manage the unloading process for everyone leading into the WAC Championships."

GCU sophomore Alex Volkov broke the men's 100 individual medley record when he won with a time of 49.03 seconds. The previous record was 50.25 seconds.

Jonathan Rom also broke the Lopes men's 200 breaststroke record with a time of 1:55.41. The sophomore's first-place finish was over 2 1/2 seconds faster than the previous pool-best time.

"The meets these past two weeks have set us up well as we transition to the second half of the season and the WAC Championships," Schaffer said. "We have made a very good start, but we still have a lot of work to do if we are going to accomplish our goals for the end of the season."

The Lopes next full-team competition will be Jan. 6 at Arizona State.

Full results from Saturday can be found here.