Syracuse swim team coach Lou Walker has said all season long that the final result – a win or a loss – doesn’t always mean the meet was a success or a failure.

On Saturday at Boston University, Walker saw both happen, as the men’s team won 141-91 and the women lost 126-117. On the women’s side, the score was tied at 113 going into the last event – the 400 freestyle relay. Syracuse, outnumbered two relays to one, came in second place and lost the meet.

Despite losing on the last event, the team still views the meet as a success. Walker said that having a small women’s team means that when depth prevents a win, as it did on Saturday, personal accomplishments must be evaluated.

‘The best thing that can happen is that you swim your best and you win,’ Walker said. ‘In my mind and to my thinking, number two is you swim your best and you lose. Number three would be you don’t swim well and you win. And you really don’t want to have a number four.’

Sophomore backstroker Sarah Manning, who swam the third leg of the relay, looks past the final score and looks at individual performances. Manning won the 1,000 yard freestyle by more than 20 seconds and placed third in the 500 yard freestyle, swimming season-best times in both.

‘We would rather go fast times and maybe lose by a little bit and have a really good meet than win the meet and not go fast at all,’ Manning said.

Despite having only nine available swimmers compared to BU’s 22, the team won more than half its races and nearly won the match. Picking up two of the seven wins on Saturday was diver Alida DiPlacido, who continued her dominance by winning both the one and three meter springboard competitions. DiPlacido broke her own school records in both events, and remained undefeated on the season.

On the men’s side, the team win was highlighted by individual wins from unlikely sources. Sophomores Matthew Brock and Peter Gollands and freshman Ryan Corcoran each recorded their first wins of the season.

For Gollands, who won the 200 yard IM and placed second in the 200 yard butterfly, his performances and those of his teammates came as no surprise. And like Manning, he measures those performances more by time than by place.

‘We’ve been just feeding off of each other’s energy in practice and its really showing in the meets,’ Gollands said.Both teams are entering a period in their training that allows them to swim their fastest times of the season, Walker said.

While some teams train their swimmers to swim fast at meets before Christmas, Walker’s program is designed to produce the best results at the end of the season.Since break, pool time has been shortened considerably. Much of that time has been replaced by workouts outside of the pool in an effort to decrease the intensity and increase the swimmers’ energy.

‘Coach has been reassuring us that we’ve been training right and it’s starting to feel right in the water,’ Gollands said. ‘You’ll start seeing massive improvements in meets.’

Those improvements were visible last weekend as the swimmers swam season-best times in the majority of their races. For Manning, this leads to increased confidence as the team enters the final stretch of its season.

Said Manning: ‘I’m really excited going into the Seton Hall meet because I did well in the last meet.’

Published on January 23, 2007 at 12:00 pm