This past weekend, the women’s swimming and diving team set 14 school records at the NESCAC Championship meet at Middlebury College. The team finish sixth out of 11 schools over the three-day period. They were just short of the top five, with a total score of 959 points. Last year, the Polar Bears earned 932.5 points, which was good enough for a fifth place finish.
“In swimming you work all year for one championship meet,” said Mariah Rawding ’18. “That hard training throughout the entire year made a huge impact at the end.”
The Polar Bears started strong from the very first day, when Rawding won an individual NESCAC title with a 29.32 in the 50 yard breaststroke.
“It was so exciting. I wasn’t expecting it going into the meet,” said Rawding. “Also, it was really fun to see the seniors do so well...that was really inspiring to the rest of the team.”
Rawding, along with Bridget Killian ’16, Sophia Walker ’17 and Lela Garner ’16, finished in fourth place at the 200 freestyle relay final.
Killian set a pair of school records in the 50 freestyle (23.84) and 100 freestyle (52.02). Garner set a school record in the 200 free (1:52.61), in the 50 backstroke (26.90) and in the 100 backstroke (57.21). In addition, Reading set new marks in the 50 fly (26.08) and 100 fly (57.82). First year Ally Fromson-Ho set a new record in the 200 fly (2:08.37).
Other successes of the day included senior Mariah Reading’s eighth place finish in the 50 butterfly final, with a time of 28.13, and Garner’s sixth place finish in the 50 backstroke final in 26.96. Killian earned a top three spot in the 50 yard free final and won 27 points with a 23.94.
Finally, the 400 medley relay team composed of Garner, Rawding, Reading and Killian took a third place finish in the final with time of 3:48.92, setting a Bowdoin record. The team itself racked up 393.5 points that day.
Last year, the team’s divers were absent due to injury. Their presence in the competition this year made a huge impact. By the end of the weekend, Bowdoin’s two divers, Christine Anderson ’17 and Rebecca Stern ’19, accumulated a total of 106 points for the team. Stern finished second in the three meter event with a score of 428.25, and Anderson followed in third place with 406.80. In addition, the diving coach Kelsey Willard won Diving Coach of the Year.
Continuing her winning ways from the first day of the meet, Rawding brought home three records total in the 50, 100 and 200 breaststroke. Aside from capturing her individual NESCAC victory in the 50 (29.32), she finished in second place in the 100 (1:03.39) and third place in the 200 (2:19.76).
Even more records were set in the relays. Killian, Garner, Rawding and Sterling Dixon ’19 combined in the 400 free relay to set a new record with a time of 3:27.95. Holly Rudel ’17, Rawding, Reading and Walker set a record in the 200 medley relay with a time of 1:45.48.
Both Rawding and Walker note that one highlight of the whole weekend was the senior women’s impressive performances.
“The senior women’s class was pretty incredible,” said Walker. “They really brought it home... It is hard to take off time every year, especially in your last year at Bowdoin.”
After this weekend, it appears the team has peaked in a way that they had hoped for by this point in the season. Rawding explained that everyone went in with the mindset of having worked and trained hard all season with this one weekend in mind and they are happy with how the championship meet turned out.
“The same things that we always work on—starts, turns, speed—the hard part is getting that all to come together at one particular moment in time, and I think we did a really good job bringing that together,” said Walker.
Official NCAA announcements will be posted on February 24. While it is still to be determined, Rawding attests that at the moment it looks promising that a few relays will go to the NCAA Championships, which are held the first week of Spring Break in North Carolina.
“It is such an honor to go [to NCAAs],” said Walker. “The team is very excited to have some members able to compete.”