LONDON, Ont. – The Western Mustangs swimming team returned to the pool at the Western Student Recreation Centre on Saturday, hosting Brock, Waterloo, and Laurentian in a series of dual meets. The Mustangs defended their home pool in a strong fashion, capturing many strong individual performances as well as both the men’s and women’s teams going 3-0 against their opponents.
                 
In addition to the Western A and Western B relay teams finishing first and second respectively for both the men’s and women’s division, twenty individual races were held in total. From those races, Mustangs swimmers accumulated almost fifty individual third-place-or-better finishes between the men’s and women’s teams. The meet was a competitive one, as several of the races were initially deemed too close to call and had to be reviewed to set the official winning times.

Several of the individual matches were dominated by Mustangs swimmers. Elisa Coloantonio set the pace in the first individual race, the women`s 400M freestyle, finishing first for the Mustangs in with a time of 4:34.72.

Later, in the men’s 50M backstroke, nineteen participants would race in three heats and Mustangs swimmers posted the top nine times in the event, including Louis Wong with the top time of 26.68. Many Mustangs swimmers achieved multiple top three finishes in their various events. Katie Keeping and Jennifer McNaughton each had three top 3 finishes. Several swimmers, including Elisa Coloantonio, Leeann Midgley, Shannon Nell, Christopher Williamson, Emily Sproule and Louis Wong each had two top 3 finishes. Wong`s finishes were both first place times.

Events 11 (women’s 100M freestyle) and 21 (women’s 50M butterfly) had the Mustangs place first through sixth in both events. Mustangs swimmers went first through fifth in Event 18, the men’s 50M freestyle, and would place first through forth in Events 17 and 19, the women’s 50M freestyle and the women’s 200M IM respectively. As well, Event 15 (women’s 200M backstroke) had the Western swim team place consecutively in the top three. In fact, the only event in which Western did not have a top three finish was Event 6, the men`s 200M breaststroke.

The last event of the day, the 200M mixed freestyle relay, was fittingly won by the dominating Mustangs team.

After all points were tabulated, the Mustangs swept each of the head-to-head competitions on both the men's and women's side. Full scores are available here: /documents/2013/1/27/Scores_Quad_Meet.pdf?id=1367 and full results from each race are available here: /documents/2013/1/27/Meet_results_Quad_Meet.pdf?id=1368

Overall, the meet was a great success for Western University`s swim team. The team looks to carry the momentum of their success into the OUA Championships, held in Toronto from Thursday February 7th to Saturday, February 9th.