BATON ROUGE – – The LSU men’s swimming and diving team maintained its undefeated status Saturday afternoon as they cruised to victory over Notre Dame 137-98. The Tigers upped their early season record to 4-0, 1-0 with the win.
“I thought that we performed well today,” said head coach Rick Meador. “We came into this meet with only about a week of training after the holidays, but the team worked hard and did a good job today. The guys also did a good job of stepping up their level of play and they nicely filled some spots that were vacated by injuries.”
The Tigers won 12 of the 13 events throughout the competition, and never really allowed Notre Dame to remain a threat in the meet.
After the first race, LSU took an early 15-2 lead by placing both first and second in the 200-yard medley relay. The team of senior Tommy Starkweather, junior Eddie Aguilar, and sophomores Steve Gluck and Carlton Greer won the event with a time of 1:33.22.
LSU freshman Dennis Rowe and sophomore Stephen Naremore were both impressive in the distance events. They each won their competitions by extremely large margins, and swam some of the best times of their careers.
Rowe placed first in the 1000-yard freestyle with a time of 9:39.53, and Naremore destroyed the competition in the 500-yard freestyle event by winning the race in 4:42.99. Notre Dame’s Sean Casey finished second with a time of 4:54.19.
“Dennis and Stephen did some outstanding swimming in this meet,” said Meador. “They both impressed me very much with their determination and improvement, and I am definitely pleased with their performances.”
LSU team captain Ken Kuhn won his two events for the second time this week. He placed first in both the 50 and 100-yard freestyle competitions by swimming times of 20.79 and 45.94 seconds. Kuhn also led the 200-yard freestyle relay team to a victory, along with junior Kevin Ayer, Greer, and freshman Martin Latz.
The diving competition was also an LSU sweep. In the 1-meter event, Corey Fox took first-place with a score of 350.32, while junior Erik Petursson won the 3-meter event with 312.07 total points.
The LSU swimming and diving team will next be in action January 14-15 at the Dallas Morning News Classic.