Rowan men’s swimming suffered their first setback of the season, falling to the Salisbury University Seagulls by a score of 177-85, on Nov. 1 at Maggs Physical Activities Center Swimming Pool in Salisbury, Maryland. The Profs fell to 2-1 with the loss.
Salisbury was ranked No. 22 nationally heading into the event, making it Rowan’s first big test of the early season. Salisbury defeated Rowan the past two seasons, and now has three straight wins against the Profs, and leads the all-time record against them with a 3-2 record.
Junior Braden Sheehan continued his impressive start to the season with first-place finishes in the 200 free with a time of 1:55.97 and 200 IM with a time of 2:09.84. Sheehan also earned second in the 100 free.
“I thought we raced well. I thought we competed at a level that we should’ve been at this time,” Head coach Brad Bowser said. “Like I said before, dual meets don’t really matter. It can be turned into a team sport, but we really focus on individual ability to swim races, so we look at the big picture and not just the meet.”
Junior Gavin Danze and Joshua Oliveira also contributed with second-place finishes in the 400 free and 800 free for Danze and 100 butterfly for Oliveira. Freshman continued to play a role in these early-season meets as Mason Parkzes and Nolan McCloskey notched second-place finishes of their own in the 100 back and 200 back, respectively.
Oliveira felt the team’s morale alone helped make the meet against a tough opponent a success in its own right, and helped earn some good wins in the events they won.
“The biggest takeaway was that the team was very positive the whole meet,” Oliveira said. “We had great tough swings. We went into practice very heavy the whole week before that. We all raced with a lot of positivity, cheering on the sidelines too. We had a lot of good individual wins, good relays.”
The Profs will head back on the road again this weekend, heading to face off against the Division II West Chester University Rams on Saturday, Nov. 8th, in West Chester, Pennsylvania.
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