By Jason Marsteller
PHOENIX, Arizona, October 25. THE third match-up in the SwimmingWorldMagazine.com Meet of the Week program this weekend features a Division III contest between perennial contenders Carthage and Wabash.
We've already previewed both the Indiana at Northwestern contest, and the Ouachita Baptist at Henderson State tilt.
Right now, we check out the Carthage at Wabash battle:
Date and Time: Saturday, October 27, 2007 at 1 p.m.
Location: Crawfordsville, Ind.
Facility: Class of 1950 Natatorium
Carthage's Last Time Out:
The meet against Wabash is the season-opener for Carthage.
Looking forward with Carthage head coach Greg Earhart:
Our guys are excited to finally get on the blocks and race. Typically you can ease into the season with lighter opponents, get lots of guys into the meet and see how and where the new guys fit in. We'll still try to do that – it's important to our long-term goals this season, but Wabash is anything but a light opponent, and we want to be competitive. They beat us for the first time last year, have one of the nation's top freshmen classes this year, and have a team and a coach that we have a lot of respect and admiration for.
Wabash's Last Time Out:
The 2007-08 season started off for Wabash with the team finishing third out of nine teams at the annual North Coast Athletic Conference Relays held on Oct. 20. The Little Giants posted third-place finishes in two events. The first came from the 200-yard butterfly relay team of Robert Fozkos, Daniel Michael, Adam Petro and Eric Vaughan. The foursome took third place with a time of 1:35.11. Jordon Blackwell, Blaine Cooper-Surma, Michael and Nick Rockefeller then placed third in the 200-yard freestyle relay with a time of 1:26.96, less than two seconds off the winning time of 1:25.46 posted by Kenyon.
The 200-yard medley relay teams started the meet with a fourth-place finish. The quartet of Zach Phillips, Kyle O'Keefe, Michael and Cooper-Surma finished the race with a time of 1:38.97. The Little Giants then added another fourth-place finish in the 200 backstroke relay. Phillips, Petro, Peter Hewitt, and Vaughan completed the race in 1:40:48, trailing only Kenyon and Denison. The 500-yard crescendo relay team of Cooper-Surma, Blackwell, Chad Woods, and Elijah Sanders also took fourth place (4:18.11).
Wabash divers combined for seconds on both the one- and three-meter boards. No individual totals were available.
The Little Giants scored 108 points, trailing Kenyon in first with 148 points and Denison in second with a 134. Wooster (88), Wittenberg (68), Hiram (64), Ohio Wesleyan (54), Allegheny (38), and Oberlin (34) rounded out the team scoring.
The meet against Carthage will be Wabash's second dual meet of the season, as the team will travel to Transylvania University on Friday, Oct. 26 at 7 p.m., before heading home to host Carthage the following day.
Looking forward with Wabash head coach John Weitz:
We had a great start at the NCAC relays with our best point total ever. Even missing a few key swimmers due to a freak injury and prior academic commitments, we improved over last year's results in every event except one.
The Carthage meet is an exciting opportunity for us. They were [19th] in the country last year, and should move up this year. We are going to need some big swims from our freshman class to beat them. To complicate matters, we should be returning from a meet at Transylvania around 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. We look forward to the challenge and expect to give Carthage a great meet.
No top times comparison for this season is available as Carthage will be opening its season, and Wabash has only competed in a non-traditional relay format.
