Ohio finished the second day of the Mid-American Conference Swimming and Diving Championships on Thursday.
Going into the preliminary session Thursday morning, the Ohio swimming and diving team started the day in fourth place and ended the final events the same night tied in sixth.
In the finals, Ohio mainly competed in the “B” group. In the group, the Bobcats placed first in the 500 freestyle, third in the 200 individual medley, fifth and sixth in the 50-meter freestyle, and fifth in the 200 freestyle relay, which raced in group “A.”
Bianca Hauser kicked off the finals event at 7 p.m. for Ohio placing third in the “B” group.
Myriah Ariza-Balter swam the 200-meter individual medley finishing third in group and claimed a personal best time of 2:04.14.
Along with Ariza-Balter, coach Rachel Komisarz-Baugh said that eight of the 11 girls that swam today broke a personal best time.
For Komisarz-Baugh, that is good enough that she is not worried so much about dropping a couple of spots.
“My expectations for the rest of the week is that we continue to drop times and have more personal bests,” she said.
In the next event, the 50-meter freestyle, teammates Tori Bagan and Haley Clark finished four hundredths of a second behind each other in fifth and sixth respectively.
In the last of the events Thursday night, 200 freestyle medley team consisting of Addison Ferguson, Haley Clark, Carrie Dukes and Tori Bagan placed fifth, which pushed Ohio back to sixth overall after falling to seventh. They are tied with Toledo with 115.5 points after two days.
The fact that Ohio dropped to sixth does not faze Komisarz-Baugh because she is concentrated more on the girls performing the best they can.
The eight girls that dropped their times to achieve personal bests, dropped their times significantly by about seven or eight seconds.
Competitions will begin again Friday morning at 11 a.m. with prelims and the finals will take place at 7 p.m. Friday night.
Komisarz-Baugh said that if her team continues to drop times, by default the Bobcats will move up in the rankings.
“I expect more of what we’ve been doing.”
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