CMS Men's Swimming and Diving Opens With Defeat at UC San Diego

SAN DIEGO, Calif. - The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men's swimming and diving team began its winter season with a tough road trip to UC San Diego, a Division II program in transition to Division I, and came away with some strong performances as it gets ready for a busy month of November.

UC San Diego finished with a 176-116 win in the team standings on the afternoon. The Stags had their best showing in the 200-yard butterfly, where senior John Everett finished first in 1:55.38, followed by junior Henry Limm (1:55.63) and freshman Matthew Waddell (1:55.70), giving CMS the 1-2-3 finishers in the event, touching the wall just .32 apart between the three of them.

Senior Aaron Lutzker came in third in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 52.11, but earned the nine points for finishing first, since the two Tritons ahead of him weren't counted in the team standings. He was followed closely by freshman Joel Lotzkar (52.36) and senior John Jeang (53.30). 

CMS began the day with the 200-yard medley relay, with the team of junior Dave Makhervaks, Lutzker, sophomore Marco Conati and sophomore Daniel Hayon clocking a 1:34.37 to finish second behind the UC San Diego A team, but ahead of the Tritons B team. The first individual event was the 1000 free, where sophomore Kyle Fendorf came in under the 10-minute barrier with a 9:56.02, finishing fifth. 

Freshman Michael Lee led a competitive race for the Stags in the 200 free, finishing in 1:44.87, just ahead of sophomore Andreas Roeseler (1:45.12), and also came in second in the 500 free with a time of 4:40.86. Roeseler (47.58) and freshman Christian Simon (47.87) had strong showings in the 100 free, coming in third and fifth place, respectively. 

Makhervaks (53.05) and Nicholas Tan (53.10) finished side by side in third and fourth place in the 100 back, while senior John Jeang broke 2-minutes in the 200 back at 1:59.66.

Four CMS swimmers came in under a minute in the 100 breast, Lutzker (3rd, 58.19), freshman Walter Limm (58.93), senior Tyler Welty (59.47) and Simon (59.94). Henry Limm was third in the 200 breast in 2:06.81. Tan (1:55.94) and Lutzker (1:56.03) each broke two minutes in the 200 IM. 

The day ended with the 400-yard freestyle relay, where Hayon, Simon, Conati, and Roeseler clocked a 3:07.72. 

CMS will be back in action next weekend when it travels to Chicago for a tri-meet with WashU, and then returns home for SCIAC meets with Chapman on Nov. 10, and Occidental and Caltech on Nov. 17.