The Oberlin College swim and dive team officially finished their season a few weeks ago at the Spartan Invitational on Feb. 21, following the North Coast Athletic Conference Championships on Feb. 14. The meets mark the end of a turbulent yet successful season for the Yeomen and Yeowomen.
Highlighting the NCAC Championships were fourth-year Leo Powers and second-year Yoo Soomin, each swimming for a program record.
Powers reset his own record in the 100-yard individual medley, needing just 51.44 seconds to place third overall and earn NCAC All-Conference honors. This was the third year in a row that he has set a personal best in the 100 IM at the NCAC Championships. Powers also set the second-fastest program time in the 100-yard butterfly, swimming it in 49.82 seconds.
Additionally, Yoo broke the Oberlin program record in the 100-yard breast, inching out the record set by Maura Selenak, OC ’08, of 1 minute, 7.58 seconds by .28 seconds. Despite breaking the record, Yoo didn’t realize it right away.
“Because I wear glasses, I was a little bit blind,” Yoo explained. “I turned around, and I saw my coaches and my teammates cheering really loud, and I thought, ‘Why are they cheering?’ [That’s when I realized] holy crap, I did it. It just took me a second to actually process it.”
Going into her second year, Yoo specifically set the goal of breaking this school record.
“Last year, I was .28 [seconds] off the record, and at that time I didn’t really think of it as a possibility,” Yoo said. “I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll be able to do it, maybe I won’t.’ But after conferences, seeing that my time was so close, I was like, ‘This is completely doable.’”
Besides the record-breaking swims, the rest of the team excelled, too. Second-year Zach Black swam 53.81 in the 100-yard IM, earning him eighth overall and a trip to the A-Finals. Third-year Charles Matia swam the 200-yard breast in 2:07:02, a personal best and the third-fastest swim in program history. Plus, first-year Kaylee Johnson swam a personal best 2:13.00 in the 200-yard fly, ranking eighth in program history.
“I swam the 200-fly a lot this season, but every time it felt a little different; every time, I felt like there was something I could work on,” Johnson said. “For prelims, I [swam] a 2:14, and I wasn’t quite happy with the way some of my turns were. And then I got to come back that night and swim at the finals, and I was a lot happier with how that went.”
The four-day event ended with the Yeowomen having amassed 681 points, good for sixth place, and the Yeomen with 786 points, finishing seventh overall. Though the day didn’t end with a podium finish, the team feels they did exceptionally well, especially given how difficult the conference is for swimming.
“Kenyon and Denison are top five in the country perennially,” Head Coach Alex de la Peña explained. “Kenyon, at one point, won 30 straight [National Championships] on the men’s [side]. Kenyon’s women won 18 straight at one point.”
Despite being in a challenging conference, Coach de la Peña emphasizes to players that facing off against talented teams is a good thing.
“We are lucky to be in this conference because there are conferences where we would not be challenged, right?” Powers said.
Though the Spartan Invitational was technically the last meet of the season, many athletes chose to end strong at the NCAC Championships.
“Not everybody came; some people wanted to finish the season right at conference,” said Powers. “A couple of people wanted to get some more swims in. I went, and we had, I think, 10 swimmers there.”
The meet, hosted by Case Western Reserve University, boasted 14 personal bests, including Powers, who swam the 100-yard backstroke in 52.24 seconds, ranking fourth in program history.
Even though the team performed well throughout the year — the men ending with a record of 5–3 and the women 4–4 — it wasn’t the smoothest season.
“We faced a lot of issues with coaching staff changes in the beginning,” Yoo explained. “But I think we really showed our resiliency as a team. We just took it in stride, and we went ahead and did what we could with the circumstances that were given. I’m just really proud of our team.”
The coaching changes, the loss of talented seniors who graduated the year before, and a lot of injuries among an already smaller-than-average team made it so the team had to work even harder.
“It always felt like we were showing up to work,” Johnson said. “It never felt like we were coming into practice like we were the kings of the world. We came into practice [thinking] we have to work to get ahead.”
“We had some unbelievable athletes graduate last year,” Powers said. “To be able to perform as close to [last year’s] level as we did with not even a full roster is a testament to the work that we did this year. Everybody swam really fast. I saw some swims that I couldn’t even believe.”
For Coach de la Peña, next season’s success will come from continuing to pay attention to the details and training hard in the offseason.
“I think the biggest part of it is continuing to pay more attention to details, and that carries through into the offseason, too,” de la Peña said. “But I think in the offseason, conditioning and training to carry forward are going to be important for us to take that next step and to come into next season. We want to be fresh but be in the best shape that we can, so that we can carry the momentum going forward.”
