Seniors Shine in Final Swimming and Diving Meet at Mona Plummer
By Ross Dunham, SDA Media Relations
TEMPE, Ariz. -- One day removed from taking on the No. 1 ranked women’s and No. 2 ranked men’s teams from Cal, the Arizona State swim and dive teams welcomed No. 3 and No. 10 women’s and men’s teams from Stanford to Mona Plummer Aquatic Center on Saturday.
Despite not beating the Stanford Cardinal on either side, there were plenty of bright spots on the day to send off the 11 seniors in their final dual meets in front of the home crowd at Mona Plummer.
The ASU women (4-7) fell to the Cardinal by the score of 131-100, and the men (3-8) lost 134-96.
Similar to Friday’s meet against Cal, the springboard competition paced the scoring for the Sun Devils against Stanford. Freshman diver Mara Aiacoboae locked up a first place finish in the 3-meter dive with her score of 320.25, edging out second place by 22 points.
After sweeping the 1-meter and 3-meter dives on Friday, senior diver Hailey Casper followed that up with yet another first place finish in the 1-meter on Saturday with a score of 302.33 – a nice send-off to her Sun Devil career at Mona Plummer.
On the men’s end, freshman David Hoffer finished first in the 3-meter dive with a score of 353.18, and right behind him was junior Hunter Atha, scoring 317.55 to take second place.
In between the lanes, sophomore distance swimmer Anna Olasz narrowly missed beating her season best time of 10:00.20 in the 1000-yard freestyle set Friday, as she touched the pad in 10:00.68 to take home first in the race on Saturday.
Tadas Duskinas finished third in the 50 free, just .24 seconds behind the leader. With his time of 20.86, the sophomore beat his first place time Friday by a tenth of a second. And Zac Dalby, one of the 11 Sun Devil seniors competing on Saturday, placed second in the 200 fly with a time of 1:49.63, just half a second behind the leader.
Arizona State was able to turn it on in the final five races of the day. To get the ball rolling, Jan Kutnik won the 500 free in dramatic fashion, edging out Stanford’s Drew Cosgarea by only .06 seconds.
It was then freshman Jorie Caneta who took the top spot in the women’s 200-yard breast, clocking in at 2:16.27. Teammates Tory Houston and Ivana Ninkovic were close in tail to finish second and third, respectively. Thibaut Capitaine was able to touch the pad in 2:01.74 to place first in the men’s 200 breast.
The Sun Devils finished strong in the final 200 free relays. After a women’s win, Richard Bohus anchored the final leg of the men’s race to bring home the top spot with a total time of 1:21.74.
The Arizona State swim and dive teams’ next dual meet is on Feb. 6th and 7th when they travel down to Tucson to face the Arizona Wildcats in the final Pac-12 matchup of the year before Pac-12 Championships.