Lady Flames Swimming Comes Second to PSU
The Liberty women’s swimming and diving team split matches at home Oct. 29-30 against Penn State University and Eastern Carolina University.
The Lady Flames beat Eastern Carolina University 339 to 73 but was outscored 301 to 178 by a strong Penn State team.
The Nittany Lions won 21 out of 23 events over the two-day contest with ECU and Liberty each tallying a win. Liberty’s lone champion was diver Maddie Freece, who bested the field in the three-meter diving competition with a score of 252.45.
This sprint format meet featured mostly shorter events, which included a number of untraditional races like the 100-medley relay, 25 freestyle, 50 backstroke and the 100-freestyle relay.
The Lady Flames had two near victories on the first day of competition as Abbie Shaw and Chloe Harris were beat by Penn State Swimmers in the 50 Backstroke and 200 Individual Medley. On the second day, Lauren Chennault, Genna Joyce and Jessica Schellenboom added three more second-place finishes for the Lady Flames.
Despite the lack of first place finishers in the results, many Lady Flames left the meet with some of the fastest times in the Coastal Collegiate Sports Association (CCSA).
Head Coach Jake Shellenberger does not put a lot of stock in early season dual meets and said his team benefits from facing teams like Penn State. The Flames have faced the Nittany Lions on four different occasions, in part because of a friendly rivalry.
“Both [Assistant Coach] Jessica Barnes and I are from Pennsylvania. Jessica is a Penn State graduate. I coached there for three years, and I took some grad classes while I was there,” Shellenberger said. “We have a great relationship with Penn State.”
Some of the athletes have even had siblings who swam for Penn State, and Assistant Coach Barnes has a brother who is currently one of its coaches.
Although Liberty is 0-4 against Penn State, the team values these contests as an opportunity to face higher-level competition.
“We’re always looking to swim, dive, [teams] that are outside of where we are in hopes that we step up and try and compete with them,” Shellenberger said.
Regular season dual meets, however, do not contribute to the Flames championship aspirations as the conference title is decided completely by a four-day meet in February.
“Everybody goes to the conference championship meet, and how you perform there, at the conference meet, determines your placing in the conference,” Shellenberger said.
At this point in the season, he said that the team’s focus is on doing heavy training and practicing starts, turns and overall race strategy.
After training hard all winter, the Lady Flames will enter the CCSA Championships Feb. 16-19 as the three-time reigning champions.
In the meantime, Liberty will take a break from competition before competing in the TYR’85 Invite at home Nov. 19-21.
Consentino is a sports reporter. Follow him on Twitter.