The Wolverine: Covering University of Michigan Football and Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/70103
BIG TENS: WOMEN'S SWIMMING Michigan Fights, But Falters At Big Ten Championships diving team looked to be peaking at the right time. Winners of five of their previous six meets, and swimming at a pool where they captured the Hawkeye Invitational title in early December, the Wolverines had high hopes for their first Big Ten title since the 2004 season. Unfortunately, the waters of Iowa The Michigan women's swimming and City were not so kind the second time around. Michigan found itself in a deep hole in the early going after being disquali- fied in the very first race of the Big Ten Championships Feb. 15-18 due to a bad exchange in the 200-yard medley relay. The quartet, comprised of senior Cait- lin Dauw, senior Alexa Mehesan, junior Ashley Cohagen and sophomore Angela Chokran, provided one of the squad's best opportunities to capture an indi- vidual conference title after recording the second-fastest time in the event in school history earlier in the season. The Wolverines would never recover. For the first time in head coach Jim Richardson's 27-year tenure in Ann Arbor, Michigan failed to produce an individual Big Ten champion, and its eighth-place finish represents the low- est conference result in the history of the program. "It is perplexing and disappointing to Senior Caitlin Dauw was U-M's only women's swimmer to receive all-conference accolades this year, earning second-team All-Big Ten notice. PHOTO COURTESY MICHIGAN ATHLETIC MEDIA RELATIONS say the least," Richardson said. "The disappointment is ex- acerbated by two things: how well we swam all year long and how well we performed in December at the very same facility. "It's tough from a coaching standpoint because, when you have people like we have on our team, you want them to fin- ish where they deserve to finish. You want them to get some really fast swims that are reflective of how they prepared, the character they possess and how hard they trained. When that doesn't happen, it hurts twice as much." After the painful start, and against what would prove to be an insurmountable deficit, the unrelenting Wolverines refused to drift listlessly to the finish, and instead opted to combat the unforeseen adversity as a collective unit. "I thought the most telling thing is how we handled what happened to us," Richardson said. "When negative things than Dauw, who entered as the Wolverines' only sure shot to qualify for the NCAA Championships March 15-17. Although the senior could not replicate her first-place finish in the 100-yard butterfly from the Big Ten Champion- ships a year ago, she churned out U-M's best performance of the competition with a second-place finish in the event. The two-time conference champion also finished fifth in the 200-yard butterfly and was named second-team All-Big Ten, the only Wolverine to receive all-conference accolades. "Caitlin did not go on full rest during the meet, No one donning the Maize and Blue had a better meet happen in the middle of something that is very important to a team, and things aren't happening the way they expected them to happen, a number of problems can arise including frustration and fragmentation, but there was no crying or gnashing of teeth, no throwing goggles. "We may have not totally understood at the time how we got to where we were, and for whatever reason we just weren't as fast as we needed to be in some key areas, but there was no quit in this group and we had some individuals who had terrific meets. " 94 THE WOLVERINE APRIL 2012 said. "We felt that her first-semester swims were adequate enough to qualify for the NCAA Championships. That is why I thought her performances were very good, because we leaned on her a bit and she was not completely rested, but still swam right on top of her lifetime best. " Richardson In all, 21 Wolverines swam career-best times, and the Maize and Blue collected 12 individual top-10 finishes. Most importantly for their head coach, they scratched and " clawed together until the bitter end. "There's a phrase in the South that describes our team's attitude — when you're up to your rear end in alligators, it's not the time to argue about who forgot to drain the swamp — you have to fight the alligators, there was one thing our team did, it was fight alligators." " Richardson quipped. "If — Kevin Minor