Spartans Fall to Purdue Despite Solid Swims

West Lafayette, IND.–A talented Purdue Boilermaker swim and dive team was coming off a long plane trip from Hawaii and a meet yesterday against the Michigan Wolverines, but that did not stop them from earning two victories over Michigan State Saturday afternoon.

The Spartan women fell 167-125 and the men lost 187-112, although head coach Matt Gianiodis was pleased with his team’s performance.

“It’s been six weeks and I thought we got off to a pretty good start,” said Gianiodis. “Purdue is talented and they had a meet last night and I thought they were a little fatigued, but our kids swam pretty good.”

Michigan State had quality swims in multiple events, starting out with a first and second-place finish in the women’s 100-yard breaststroke with junior Shelby Lacy posting a winning time of 1:05.28 and freshman Kennedy Cutler getting second at 1:06.64.

Senior Bryan Williams won the 100 and 200-yard butterfly going 49.10 and 1:50.42 respectively, while classmate Summer Strickler earned a victory in the 100-yard freestyle, going 51.94.

The men also earned victories in the 200-yard backstroke via freshman Sam Hiller (1:52.40) and senior Nick Roberts in the 200-yard breaststroke (2:07.08).

“When we have huge time off we usually don’t perform as well, but I felt like we performed very well,” Gianiodis said, who was most pleased with the performance of Roberts.

“Nick Roberts had a fantastic meet,” he said. “I thought he was really aggressive going out in both of his breaststrokes and I think he came back with a solid (200-yard) IM at the end, he did a great job.”

With the losses, the Spartan women fell to 3-4 (0-3) and the men 0-3, (0-2).

The Michigan State women are back in action next Friday in East Lansing against Bowling Green, and both teams swim against Eastern Michigan with Buffalo next Saturday.

Michigan State at Purdue results


Max King is the host of Pool Time for Impact Sports.

Photo: Max King