The Grand Canyon University Club Swimming team traveled to Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio for the College Club Swimming National Championships, where the men finished 8th, the women finished 9th, and the combined team finished 7th. The Lopes jumped five spots from their 12-place performance at last year's CCS National Championships in Atlanta, Georgia.
"We started the meet fast," said GCU Head Coach Jeremy Phung. "On Friday morning, our men's 800m freestyle relay team dropped a whole second from last year, and then Tim Koza won the men's 400m individual medley."
Koza set a CCS Nationals record for his first-overall finish in the 400m IM with a time of 3:59.50, a whopping 17 seconds faster than his seed time.
"The second day was a bit slower," said Phung. "We were hoping for some more medals and podium finishes because of races we were confident we could drop time from last year, but the field got faster."
One of those races, the men's 200m freestyle relay, saw the Lopes get nearly a second faster from their 3rd place finish last year, though their placement dropped to 5th.
On the women's side, Lopes' swimmer Hailey Sears was all over the pool, earning 2nd place in the 50m breaststroke and 3rd place in the mixed 200m freestyle relay while also competing in the 200m freestyle relay and the 100m individual medley.
"Hailey had some really close races down the stretch, but she was such a team player for us," said Phung. "Some of her competitors weren't swimming in nearly as many races, so for Hailey to help us finish 3rd in the 200m freestyle relay in what was her 16th swim of the weekend is huge."
The Lopes totaled 553 points for the combined team section – a huge improvement over last year's 379.
For GCU, a team who made it a point of emphasis this season to focus on being able to swim fast in three-day meets (including when they competed in the first-ever CCS Western Regionals back in the fall), the weekend was a chance to prove they'd been preparing.
"There was a lot that went into our approach to this meet," said Phung. "We had our schedule drawn out pretty much hour-by-hour because we knew that recovery is such a huge deal in longer meets like this. We also tried more morning practices this year to get our athletes ready and even switched up our travel schedule a bit from last year to get there earlier."
On the future of the program, Phung thinks there's no reason to slow down.
"A ton of our main scoring athletes are coming back," said Phung. "We also have some incoming men's distance swimmers that we're excited about, and the experience gained for our fairly young women's team this year is going to help a lot of them next season."
