Heather Hall

The South Dakota State University swim team traveled to Grand Forks, North Dakota this past weekend to compete in the University of North Dakota Invitational. With some cancellations and schedule changes, the invitational ended up being dual for SDSU and UND.

Camren Hillewaert, a junior from Craig, Colorado, led the women’s swim team by winning the 200 yard breastroke with a time of 2 minutes, 32.56 seconds. She also got second in the 100 meter breastroke with a time of 1:11.35, and second in the 200 meter individual medley with a time of 2:19.86 seconds. Other top finishers for the women were Kristen Graves who was thrid in the 200 meter breastroke, finishing in 2:41.62 seconds.

The 400 medley relay finished first in a time of 5:03.64. Members of that relay were: Liz Howard, Megan Anderson, Katie Nordtvedt and Kay Strohbehn.

According to Hillewaert, the meet was ran in two separate sessions since it was an invite so everyone did more events than usual, she competed in eight events.

On the men’s side Jesse Peterson had a sixth-place time in the 200 freestyle with a time of 1:54.40 and also a seventh-place finish in the 500 freestyle with a time of 5:15.47. Tim Wrenn also had a seventh-place finish in the 400 yard individual medley with a time of 4:50.52 and Morgan Haas had a time of 11:21.94 to place fifth in the 1000 yard freestyle.

The size of the SDSU swim team prevents them from being able to score high as a team at a lot of meets because of their lack of depth, but there are plenty of things to look forward to this season.

“Our team is so small compared to the rest of the teams in the conference. I would like to see everyone’s times drop at conference and for everyone to preform their best,” said Hillewaert.

The SDSU swim teams will have one more regular season meet next weekend in Mankato, Minnesota, which starts at 1 p.m. The North Central Conference Championships will be held Feb.19-22 in Grand Forks, North Dakota.