GARRETT WAIT
Assistant Sports Editor
Junior Ali McLeod and the Pepperdine women’s swimming team put together a historic showing against the field at the Pacific Coast Sports Conference Championships in Long Beach beginning Wednesday, Feb. 8 and ending Saturday, Feb. 11. The meet was the last of the season for the Waves.
The Waves placed third out of 14 teams at the PCSC meet, outscoring local rivals Loyola Marymount and Cal Baptist University. Pepperdine scored 893 points in the four-day meet while UC San Diego scored 1275 points to take the team title and Northern Colorado scored 976.5 points to take second place. Head Coach Nick Rodionoff said in an e-mail that he was extremely proud of the team.
“This was really a big finish for us,” Rodoionoff said. “There were two new schools, Northern Florida and Northern Colorado with whom we had never competed before and they brought some really good swimmers and divers to the meet.”
McLeod, the star of the meet for the Waves, broke school records three times during the meet, including breaking a record two times during the course of the meet.
McLeod broke the school record in the 100-meter butterfly, completing the event in 56.06 seconds and taking first place in the event. McLeod was the only Wave to win an event. The junior also accomplished an amazing feat, finishing the 100-meter backstroke event in 56.98 seconds during the preliminary heat, breaking the school record. Then, she broke her own record during the finals, swimming a 56.24 while placing second.
Pepperdine swam strong as a team, even leading the meet after the first day of events. The Waves fell to second place after the second day and dropped to fourth after the third day of the meet. The Waves rallied on the fourth and final day with excellent showings from the 400-meter freestyle relay team and individuals in the 100-meter freestyle event.
McLeod anchored the 400-meter relay team that wasn’t expected to compete against some of the teams entered in the event. However, the Waves pulled out the second fastest time in school history, clocking a 3:30.02 while finishing just behind the UC San Diego women.
“No one expected us to get that close to UCSD in that last relay,” Rodionoff said. “We were seeded third and nearly won it.”
McLeod wasn’t the only Pepperdine swimmer who shined throughout the PCSC Championships. Senior Ketrina Lemmen swam the fifth-fastest time in school history in the 200-meter freestyle event when she finished in 1:53.49.
Lemmen was also part of three separate relay teams that finished among the all-time best Pepperdine times, including the 200-meter freestyle relay (fourth-fastest), 400-meter freestyle relay (second-fastest) and the 800-meter freestyle teams (second-fastest).
Rodionoff said he was just amazed at the effort the women put in throughout the meet.
“A four day meet is really tough, it’s usually hard to keep the team up,” Rodionoff said. “Usually there is a sluggish day that can cost in placing and points. But this year, this team stayed up and focused from the first relay on Wednesday to the amazing finish on Saturday. (This is) an amazing group of athletes, (they’re) very tight, very supportive of each other, and really stepped up over and over again to swim best times and place higher than they were seeded.”
Pepperdine junior diver Lindsay Stephens-Adarme finished fourth in both the one-met and three-meter diving events.
02-16-2006
