The women’s swimming and diving team wrapped up its regular season with a loss to the University of North Texas on Wednesday night.
North Texas beat TCU, 161-139, but the H2O Frogs won the 100-meter butterfly, 200-meter butterfly and the 400-meter individual medley. The team fell to 6-8 on the year, finishing 2-6 in conference.
The win for the Mean Green was its first ever against TCU. The women’s team was previously 16-0 against North Texas dating back to the 1998-1999 season.
Coach Richard Sybesma said he was proud of the effort displayed by his team, also giving praise to North Texas.
“We’re building to a peak, which is where we are going to be three weeks from now when the conference meet starts,” Sybesma said.
Junior Cheryl Townsend placed first in the 400-meter individual medley, while sophomore Stephanie Futscher won first place in the 100- and 200-meter butterfly. The women swam to loud cheering from coaches and teammates.
“Everyone on the team really fought hard and its looking like it’s going to be a good conference meet for us,” Townsend said.
The team has overcome both injury and illness recently, with one-third of the swimmers not able to swim in the meet Wednesday, Sybesma said.
However, he said the team is not using that as an excuse. Sybesma said he’d rather have swimmers not able to swim now than miss out on the conference meet.
While the team has faced adversity brought on by illness, Stephanie Futscher said the team could benefit from being challenged.
“We’re in a pretty tough conference, with BYU and Utah,” Futscher said. “So we’ve got to be pretty tough mentally.”
Illness has caused some of the divers to miss time, and it forced junior diver Claudia Combs to miss the meet Wednesday.
Sophomore Destiny Glampe has been impressive in her first year diving for TCU and has helped keep the team competitive.
“We’ve had a rough season, with injuries and people getting sick,” Combs said. “But overall, I think we’ve done pretty well. Destiny has come in and performed very well for us.”
Glampe placed fifth in the 3-meter dive and fourth in the 1-meter dive competition, respectively. Sophomore Jennifer Ferguson placed first in the both the 1-meter and 3-meter dives.
Glampe said mental toughness and good coaching have helped her to execute dives she didn’t think she could master when she first started.
“Coach Chester has given me a lot of confidence,” Glampe said. “He’s pushed me harder than I thought I could be pushed.”
The swimming and diving team will participate in the Mountain West Conference Championships in Oklahoma City, starting Feb. 27. The meet will run through March 1.
