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The Rowan Men’s Swimming & Diving team capped off a successful weekend on Saturday, winning two meets while also seeing a large amount of individual success in the process.
The team defeated two New Jersey Athletic Conference (NJAC) opponents, William Paterson University and Montclair State University, to improve to 3-0 on the young season. This is also the team’s first 3-0 start since the 2016-17 season.
Although the team has started off on the right foot, Head Coach Brad Bowser still believes that his team has room for improvement.
“For what we had availability-wise, between all of the sickness and injuries around the team, I thought we had some that swam well and some that were flat,” Bowser said. “We have to focus on ourselves and clean up our technique.”
This year’s team has many veterans that have grown in the program. However, this weekend, it was the rookies that stepped up to the plate.
Sophomore Alex Volin contributed three individual wins throughout the two meets, as well as being a part of the 200 Yard Freestyle Relay that placed first. Freshman Gavin Luong also chipped in with two individual wins and one team win.
Coach Bowser couldn’t be more pleased with his young swimmers.
“It’s always nice to have underclassmen step up and see them put it together,” Bowser said. “That’s how we’re able to succeed and move forward in the national, regional, and conference rankings.”
Despite many positives from the weekend, Coach Bowser also noticed some key negatives, as well. The fix for those negatives all comes down to one factor in Bowser’s eyes.
“Our biggest negative is health,” Bowser said. “We have to find a way to get healthy and get this sickness out of us. For being out of competition for a year and a half, our immune systems are more beat up than usual at this time of year. So the biggest thing is definitely getting back to full strength.”
With next weekend’s scheduled meet against Ramapo College being postponed, the swimmers will now have their eyes set on the WPI Gompei Invitational from Dec. 2 through Dec. 4. The divers however will continue competing this weekend when they host the Rowan Diving Invitational on Saturday.
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