The Iowa men’s swimming team returned home from Big Tens with a shattered record book and two guaranteed tickets to the Big Show.
The Hawkeyes ended the meet in seventh place overall with 614.5 points. The finish is a 190.5-point improvement over their eighth-place finish last season. Indiana took home the meet title with 1,658 points.
On the final day of competition, in the last event championship, the 400-freestyle relay touched in at 2:51.58 for the Hawkeyes’ second NCAA automatic qualifying time of the conference meet.
The relay team of Jack Smith, Matt Kamin, Will Scott, and Joe Myhre broke the previous school mark of 2:52.53. Earlier in the season, the quartet narrowly took down ranked Notre Dame in the last stretch of the relay.
Last season, the 400-free relay team included three of its current members. The quartet touched in at 2:54.39 and narrowly missing an NCAA “B” qualifying time.
On Feb. 23, the same relay team collected Iowa’s first NCAA automatic qualifying time in the 200-free relay, touching in at 1:17.50. It passed the automatic standard by 0.12 seconds.
In the 2017 200-free relay, the quartet recorded an NCAA “B” qualifying time of 1:18.13 but was not invited to the NCAA meet.
The focus for this season in both events was coming back from last season’s disappointment.
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Plenty of Hawkeyes recorded NCAA “B” qualifying times, but now they wait for a possible invitation to the championships.
To begin competition on Feb. 24, Christopher Dawson recorded a 15:07.35 “B” time to finish at No. 10 in the mile.
In the 200 back, Kenneth Mende was the top Iowa finisher. He earned the bronze medal with a 1:42.12 “B” time to break the school record.
Smith made the “A” finals in his own individual event, the 100 free. He touched in at a “B” standard of 42.71, breaking his own school record in both the preliminariess and the finals.
Freshman Daniel Swanepoel put his name on the NCAA board in the 200 breast with a 1:56.86.
In the 200 fly, Jerzy Twarowski touched in at 1:44.80.
Freshman Anton Hoherz finished in eighth place in the platform diving with a school record 381.00 but did not qualify for the NCAA championship meet.
The NCAA Men’s Championship will be held in Minneapolis from March 22-24.
