Feb. 19, 2003
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - The Purdue women's swimming and diving team took full advantage of its home pool on the opening night of the 2003 Big Ten Women's Swimming and Diving Championships on Wednesday. After the first two events, the Boilermakers are tied with Indiana for fourth place with 62 points.
En route to their fast evening, the Boilermaker women tallied three Purdue varsity records and three NCAA cut times, one of which is an automatic NCAA time.
"Tonight was just awesome," said Purdue head women's swimming coach Cathy Wright-Eger. "In two swims, we got three varsity records and an NCAA automatic time cut. I couldn't ask for anything more. We got out of the blocks fast tonight and are off on the right foot. I can just tell we're swimming very confidently and the team is feeding off the home environment and the fans. We are really focusing well, using the home pool to our advantage and we just have to continue taking care of ourselves and what we can do, rather than worry about others.
"Now, we're right where we want to be, tied for fourth with 62 points, we're only two points out of third and eight out of first. So, it's a good tight race."
The women of the Old Gold and Black started the meet with what wound up to be a very tight 200 medley relay race against the fourth-seeded Penn State Nittany Lions. With PSU and Purdue neck-and-neck down the stretch, senior Kim Paradeise attempted to catch the Lady Lions' freestyler, but was just short. With a varsity record time that was a second and a half faster than the 2002 season and record, the Boilermaker team of seniors Lisa Dolansky, Lindsay Lange, Patricia Finnerty and Paradeise took second place with a time of 1:40.37, an NCAA automatic cut time.
In the second relay of the evening, it would be Dolansky who came out with two more varsity records to her name, as she broke the Purdue 200 free record with her leadoff split time in the 800 freestyle relay. The team of Dolansky, junior Jenni Bean, sophomore Christine Leupold and freshman Erica Chandler tallied a fifth-place finish with a time of 7:19.94 for an NCAA 'B'-cut time. Dolansky's leadoff of 1:48.53 was also an NCAA 'B'-cut time.
The Old Gold and Black will return to the pool in the morning, when they open the second day of competition and the first day of the individual events at 11 a.m. in the preliminary round. At 1 p.m. the 1-meter diving prelims will begin and at 7 p.m. two heats of the finals will begin for the 200 free relay, 500 freestyle, 200 IM, 50 free and the 1-meter diving.
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