Swimming and Diving 'grinds through' Day Two at MPSF Championships

MONTEREY PARK, Calif. -- Northern Colorado dropped to ninth in the women's team standings Thursday night at the 2012 Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Swimming and Diving Championships, being held in a split format at East Los Angeles College (swimming) and at the Air Force Academy (diving).

The Bears, with 77 team points, sit right behind Loyola Marymount (83 points) and just ahead of Seattle (67) after the second day of the Championship's four-day competition.

Northern Colorado scored 50 points Thursday to sit fifth in the team standings, but it got just 27 points Friday, earning 14 in the 400-yard medley relay and 13 in the 3-meter diving competition.

The Bears' tandem of Courtney Van Oost, Renee Stephens, Gina Riggle and Kira Alger finished 10th in the 400 relay in three minutes, 54.20 seconds.

Sara Moldenhauer came in third in the preliminaries on the 3-meter board and then sixth overall.

Casey Wolter didn't place in the 500 freestyle, but her times of 5:03.61 in the event preliminaries and her 5:03.44 in the final were the seventh and eighth fastest individual times in the event in school history.

Van Oost then added another change to Northern Colorado's top 10 in the 200 IM, clocking a 2:06.86 in the preliminaries and a 2:06.26 in the final. That was good for 19th overall for Van Oost, but both times are among the ten best ever at Northern Colorado and were part of another solid day in the pool for head coach Kelly McClanahan's program.

"Van Oost and Wolter had yet another great day," McClanahan said. "Both swam fast enough in the morning to get back and swim at night, which gave them yet another opportunity to set a personal best time.

"We had a lot of great swims today, with a lot of personal best times. I am very happy for the individual successes, but we need to dig in a little deeper and get those points that other teams are scoring. I am not happy that we have dropped four spots to ninth place today."

The swimming portion of this year's MPSF Championships will continue Friday with the 400 individual medley preliminaries at 11:30 a.m. (MT) in Los Angeles. The MPSF Diving meet will begin at 2:30 p.m. (MT).

"[Day Two] is our weakest day of the four, so I was prepared to grind through it, but we have a lot of catching up to do," McClanahan said. "After talking with the girls tonight, I am very confident we will make up the ground over the next two days."