Women’s swim travels to SDSU

Swim opens their season with a special pentathlon meet

TAYLOR NIELSEN / SPORTS EDITOR / THE USD VISTA

The USD women’s swim made the short commute to local competitor, San Diego State University (SDSU), for their first splash of the 2022-2023 season. 

The two Division I teams compete in different conferences but come together twice a year — once at the beginning of fall, and once at the beginning of spring — for a special pentathlon meet. 

A pentathlon meet is a different type of meet that does not follow typical race days. All of the pentathlon athletes that compete are signed up for the same five events: the 100-yard backstroke, the 100-yard fly, the 100-yard breastroke and the 100-yard I.M. 

The time results from these five events are then totaled together to create a combined time. Swimmers are scored based on their totaled time. 

This year, SDSU hosted the 18th bi-annual pentathlon meet between the two teams on Saturday, Sept. 9 at the Aztec Aquaplex. A total of 41 athletes participated in the pentathlon meet. 

The SDSU Aztecs dominated the top-10, but first-year Penelope Leonard put USD on the scoreboard at number 10. In her first meet as a Torero, she led the team with a combined pentathlon time of 5:12.68 after touching the wall at 59.96 in the 100-yard freestyle, 1:00.30 in the 100-yard fly, 1:00.90 in the 100-yard backstroke, 1:12.14 in the 100-yard breastroke and 1:02.54 in the 100-yard I.M. 

Three other USD swimmers placed in the top 20: Hannah Hintermeister, Audrey Gingras and Callie Johnson. 

Hintermeister finished five places behind Leonard, in 15th. Her combined time came out to 5:20.43. Her 100-yard breaststroke time was the 11th-fastest recorded time of the day for that event. 

Gingras and Johnson finished 18th and 19th. Gingras was only 0.23 seconds away from taking 17th from the Aztecs’ Jessie McMurray. 

Gingras’ 54.79 in the 100-yard freestyle, 1:01.37 in the 100-yard fly, 1:04.23 in the 100-yard backstroke, 1:15.77 in the 100-yard breastroke and 1:05.03 in the 100-yard I.M brought her pentathlon time to 5:21.19. Johnson followed Gingras with a time of 5:23.82. 

Outside of the pentathlon, the meet scheduled other short -distance events for athletes to compete in, including short -distance events that are not normally seen at a regular conference collegiate meet. 

In the 50-yard freestyle, two Toreros finished in the top 10. Gigi Vos recorded a time of 25.68, and Gingras clocked in 0.16 seconds after, at 25.84 seconds. Sam Easton recorded the highest finish of the meet and swam a 26.94 in the 50-yard fly, which earned her a position of No. 5 in the whole event. 

Leonards continued to dominate the field and finished in 7th place in the 50-yard backstroke. Gingras made another top 10 finish and hit the wall at the same time as SDSU’s Lyndsey Weber, for a tied, 10th-place finish in the 50-yard backstroke,with a time of 29.35 seconds. 

The University of San Diego women’s swim team has yet to win in a match up against SDSU. They will face the Aztecs again at the beginning of next year, on Jan. 27, and will host them at the Sports Center Pool. In the meantime, USD will head to Malibu, California, on Oct. 8,and go head-to-head in their first conference, away meet, against Pepperdine University.