The men and women’s swimming and diving teams are in the final stretch of their respective seasons.

The women’s team started the second half of the season with a third place finish in the Blue Devil invitational, which happens to be their best finish in four years.

The men’s team finished seventh. After starting the season 4-2 the men’s team dropped four straight and have fallen to 1-3 in OAC play.

After starting the season 5-1, the women’s team has dropped three straight. Both teams fell to Ohio Northern, Mount Union and John Carroll.

The men’s and women’s teams then finished their final home meet with a win defeating Pitt-Bradford and Franciscan on senior day.

All American senior swimmer Tyler Thompson has yet to place anywhere but 1st in the 100-yard breaststroke to start
the year and closed out his final home meet winning both 100 and 200-yard breaststroke and 100 individual medleys.

Senior women swimmers Nicole Gladish, Lena Kortis, and Courtney Severns each closed out their Baldwin Wallace home swimming career with first place finishes.

Lena Kortis won 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard butter-fly, Nicole Gladish won the 200-yard backstroke, and Courtney Severns won 100 yard freestyle.

The men and women’s teams will look to carry this momentum to the OAC championships. BW has 2 weeks to prepare for this upcoming meet and head coach for both teams, Laura Demaline, explained that she will cut the amount of strenuous exercise in practice and that they will be working on “dives and turns”, which is a method known as tapering.

When talking about goals for the OAC championships she said, “Winning the championships is the goal”, and also notes “Swimmers swimming personal best times are a goal as well.”

The OAC finals will be held at Ocasek Natatorium at University of Akron and will be held through February 15-17. One month later, the NCAA division III championships will be held at IUPUI Natatorium in Indianapolis Indiana from March 15-17. Tyler Thompson was the only BW swimmer to qualify last year.