The Penn State men’s and women’s swimming & diving teams swept away the Navy Midshipmen on Saturday in a co-ed dual meet that also served as the Nittany Lions’ senior day.
The final scores went 173-127 for the men (with no exhibitions) and 174-115 on the women’s side (with late exhibitions impacting the score).
Penn State started off the meet strong early by going 1-2 in the men’s 200 medley relay and 1-2-3 in the women’s 200 medley relay. The winning times went 1:30.56 in the men’s relay and 1:42.55 in the women’s relay.
The men’s “A” and “B” relays were fairly evenly matched outside of Nate Savoy’s 22.34 backstroke leadoff. Jonathan Ekstrom (25.27) outsplit Andy Schuehler (25.53) on the breaststroke leg and Jeffrey Young (19.90) outsplit Shane Ryan (20.23) on the freestyle anchor leg, both in the men’s “B” relay.
Savoy and Ryan would combine for 5 individual wins alone out of 14 individual men’s events on the day.
Ryan started his day with a convincing win in the men’s 100 yard backstroke, where he swam a 49.10. That’s his second-best time of the season so far – in fact, he’s swum his two best times of the season in January in the 100 back – one of his best events.
Ryan also won the 50 free in 20.41, ahead of teammate Young (20.65); and the 100 free in 44.95, ahead of Navy’s star Thomas Duvall.
In that race, Duvall was coming down to the bottom of that range; in addition to his second-place finish there, Duvall also won the 200 free in 1:39.04; and the 500 free in 4:28.95. Duvall placed 7th in the 500 free as a sophomore at NCAA’s last season.
“I was real pleased with the level of our efforts today,” said Navy men’s swimming head coach Bill Roberts. “The performances we had were not what we were hoping for overall, but we did have some good individual highlights. We also saw some good efforts after Penn State had already built a healthy lead.”
In addition to Ryan’s three wins, teammate Nate Savoy added two. He was dominant in the 200 yard backstroke, swimming a 1:47.59 to win by almost five seconds ahead of Navy’s Joseph Lane (1:52.17). Savoy was half-a-second better against Yale a week earlier, but he got a much better challenge in the 200 there.
Navy also went 1-2 in the men’s 100 breaststroke, with Mathias Porter (56.59) and Marlin Brutkiewicz (56.59) both presenting very good back-half swims to overcome Penn State’s Ekstrom (56.85) and Schuelher (56.85).
On the women’s side, Penn State got multiple wins from multiple swimmers.
Megan Siverling grabbed two individual wins, topping the 500 free in 4:54.98 and a 10:11.56 in the 1000 free. She was faster than those times both last week and a season ago.
Alyson Ackman won two of her own, topping the 100 back in 56.11 over teammate Allie Pennetti (56.46); and later the 100 free in 50.53, ahead of teammate Carolyn Fittin (50.92).
The lone victory for the Navy women came in the 200 IM, where sophomore Charlotte Meyer won in 2:05.14. She beat Penn State’s Katie Rowe. Rowe held a small lead after the butterfly leg, but Meyer was better everywhere else to grab a win.
Navy will close their regular season on Wednesday when they host Johns Hopkins, while Penn Sate’s final meets will come next weekend at the Bucknell Invitational, and the weekend after at the Virginia Tech Invitational.