This year’s Big Ten championships included 11 broken Iowa team records, 10 swimming and one diving. 

The Iowa women’s swimming and diving team came out of this year’s Big Ten meet positive and looking forward despite the eighth-place finish.

“Eleven school records, and it was great, it was outstanding,” head coach Marc Long said.  “As a program we are starting to separate ourselves a little bit in our position.”

Iowa is beginning to move up the Big Ten standings, advancing from 10th place in last year’s Big Tens.

Emma Sougstad, the leading point scorer on the team, thought the team performed very well, especially with her teammates setting many personal bests.  

Sougstad broke school records in the 200 medley, the 200-freestyle relay, 100 breaststroke, and the 200-medley relay.    

“I was so proud of my team; so many of my teammates got best times including lifetime bests,” she said.  “It was so cool when they touched the wall and looked up to see their time and they just have the biggest smile — It means the world.”

Not only did veterans of the team set school records for the Hawkeyes, freshman Carly O’Brien broke the school record in the 100 butterfly with a time of 54.54.  

“I was happy ,” she said. “I got mostly best times, and I dropped everything from when I came in at the beginning of the year.”

Although the team swam fast, Long still wants to improve and advance his team’s position on the Big Ten leaderboard. 

“We want to be moving up and start beating the next teams above us, Penn State and Ohio State,” Long said. “We are inching closer, but we have to have our relays score higher, and we have to get to be in positions like Becky.”

Becky Stoughton came in first in the 1,650 freestyle and was the Hawkeyes’ lone titlist.  

Even though the team broke so many school records, many of these broken records didn’t score points, something the team will try to improve.

“The future looks bright,” Long said.  “We get most of these scorers back, and we have a good class coming in, but we really want to talk a lot about being able to take that next step.”

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