Men's Swimming And Diving Team Starts 2009-10 Season

Oct. 9, 2009

South Bend, Indiana - The Cleveland State men's swimming and diving team started the 2009-10 season today when they traveled to South Bend, Indiana for the Dennis Stark Relays. The relays took place at the University of Notre Dame, with the men's squad finishing the meet in fifth place, due to not competing in all events. CSU finished second in two events and fourth in four events.

Seniors All-American Jakub Dobies and Todd Winchell were joined by sophomore Mark deSwardt and freshmen Brad Bielak and Graham Thoresen at the relays.

"Our goal was to find things that we needed to work on during practice for the first full meet," assistant coach Andrew Hancock said. "We did well with the fact the many of us haven't raced since March. We got off to a slow start, but picked things up towards the end of the meet."

The men finished second in the 200 free relay and the 1,000 free relay. deSwardt was part of both relays, teaming with Dobies, Winchell, and Bielak for the 200 free, ending with a time of 1:29.05. deSwardt worked with Thoresen in the 1,000 free to finish in a time of 9:27.09 good enough for second place.

"It is very impressive that our men's team could stay with other swimmers who are Olympic swimmers that are ranked in the world," Hancock said. "We swam against some incredibly high quality competition tonight, and that shows a lot for the team that we could hang tough even when we didn't have a full team at the meet."

The men's team will have a break before returning to action on Saturday October, 24 when Green Bay comes to town. The meet will start at 12:00 noon in Busbey Natatorium.

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