By Hailey Amato
Staff Writer
The Waves look strong coming down the home stretch to conference competition.
In their second of four consecutive home meets, Pepperdine’s women’s swimming and diving team bested local rival Cal State Northridge Saturday at Raleigh Runnels Memorial Pool.
The Waves took the meet with a 170-130 win. This meeting brought Pepperdine to 4-3 for the season.
“It was their best meet of the year,” Head Coach Nick Rodionoff said. “It was the first time they competed really well as a group.”
Many swimmers charted new waters for Pepperdine, breaking onto the “Five All-time Best Times in Pepperdine Women’s Swimming” list and setting personal bests.
“We performed really well as a team,” freshman Megan Kelly said. “We’ve been training hard and this meet everyone was getting their fastest times of the season.”
Freshman Nicole Okuna dominated the 100-yard butterfly and now holds the No. 5 spot as well as the No. 2 spot and the school record.
She also placed second to teammate junior Lindsey Krusen in the 200-yard fly.
“We stepped it up a notch from past meets,” Krusen said. “We looked stronger than we have. All those close races that could have gone either way, we fought and won them.”
Junior Stephanie Hammond, the Waves No. 1 breastroker, won both the 100-yard breastroke and the 200-yard breastroke.
She bettered her own time to take the No. 3 spot on the all-time list.
Kelly also won two events – the 100-yard freestyle and the 200-yard individual medley and came in second in the 200 freestyle.
Freshman Ketrina Lemmon clocked in second in the 100 and 200-yard backstroke. Her swim in the 200 earned her the fifth place spot on the all-time list.
Rookie Heather Brehmer sprinted to win the 50-yard freestyle in a time of 25.09.
“Probably right now the middle-distance and distance swimmers look best,” sophomore sprinter Liza Hollo said. “The sprinters need more rest before conference. We’ll get that time when we finish up these last two meets and get about two weeks of solid taper. Everyone is where they need to be right now.”
Pepperdine divers continued to look unbeatable even with their No. 1 diver Michelle Barker not competing due to illness.
Sophomore Emily Andrews took the one-meter competition with 237.25 points and sophomore Maggie Lane won the three-meter competition with 237.75 points.
The Waves will host a strong San Diego State University team Saturday at noon.
“San Diego is the strongest team we’ll face all year,” Rodionoff said. “In the past we’ve usually performed our best against them, but they’re a very, very good team. It’s going to come down to individual performances. The swimmers are going to have to test themselves.”
January 23, 2003