Jan. 8, 2011
Contact: Dan Carr
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The Cleveland State men's swimming and diving team resumed its season with a training trip to Puerto Rico this week, culminating in a victory over Connecticut in the San Juan Dual Relay Challenge on Saturday (Jan. 8).
The Vikings won two of the day's three relays to emerge with a 10-8 victory in the event.
"We had outstanding performances from everyone across the board," head coach Wally Morton said.
The team of Colin Hanner, Deni Gasparin, Justin Kermack and Mark de Swardt place first in the 400 medley relay while Ryan Blankenship, Brian Ferro, Alex Lewis and Mike Marsico placed third. Graham Thoresen, Berry Thompson, Ferro and de Swardt combined to win the 800 freestyle relay.
The 200 free relay was the only event in which the Vikings did not place first, but CSU did take second and third. Thompson, Justin Hill, Lewis and Marsico made up the runner-up squad while the third place team consisted of Gasparin, Travis Lombardozzi, Greg Glaeser and Jeff Mackey.
Diving events were also held, but UConn did not participate. Josh Gonzalez finished with scores of 278.6 in the 1-meter and 296.5 in the 3-meter while Matt DiMasso scored 258.1 points in the 1-meter and 272.6 in the 3-meter.
While the exhibition event allowed the team to end the week with a live competition, the true emphasis of the trip was to train for the remaining meets on Cleveland State's schedule.
"This week went extremely well," Morton said. "We got some great training in and, most importantly, the team had a great experience here."
The Vikings' first meet of 2011 will come on Friday (Jan. 14) when CSU will host Notre Dame in a 2:00 p,m contest. Cleveland State will then be back in action on Saturday (Jan. 15) with a quad meet against Duquesne, Oakland and Xavier in a 1:00 p.m. meet that will also serve as the team's annual Alumni Day.
"We're going to come back and swim against some historically tough teams," Morton said. "Many of them were down here training at the same facility we were - Notre Dame, in fact, stayed at the same hotel we did. We'll probably be a little tired when we come back, but, if those teams trained as hard as they should have, they will also be tired.
"We're going to focus on overcoming this obstacle and competing at the maximum permissible level. This will be a good test for the team and will really help prepare us for the conference championships."
