By Alex Pjinowski

Large red banners proclaiming Big Ten championships, All-Americans and Olympians adorn the aquatic facility at The Ohio State University in Columbus. Yet despite all these accomplishments, the Kenyon men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams did not appear fazed by competing against such a successful team at its home pool on Friday, Oct. 5.

“Going into the meet, we’re always generally a little intimidated since this is the best team that we swim all year,” Haley Townsend ’16 said. “But I think we had a lot more confidence than we did last year.”

Kenyon swimming and diving do not approach the annual OSU meet expecting victory ﾗ as of Oct. 14, the OSU men’s team is ranked No. 13 in NCAA Division I, and the women’s team is No. 20. The OSU meet came at the end of one of the hardest weeks of training this season for the Lords and Ladies.

The final team score for the women was OSU 191-Kenyon 99, and for the men OSU 186-Kenyon 101. The lone first-place finish for Kenyon came from the Lords’ 400-yard freestyle relay team, which finished with a time of 3:09.39.

“This year’s been a lot harder, and so far, it’s paid off, because we definitely performed better at OSU this year than last year,” Austin Caldwell ’15 said.

Head Coach Jess Book ’01 said he thought his swimmers raced well despite fatigue. He called discovering how to swim in the midst of training a “learning process. Every meet is an opportunity to get better,” Book said.

The Lords and the Ladies will next face rival Denison University at home on Saturday, Nov. 2 starting at 11 a.m.

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