A Bright Start To The 2023-24 Season
First-year swimmer Callie Metsala and the relay teams led the Cobbers at the season-opening meet of the year.
MOORHEAD, Minn. (10/19/23)—First-year swimmer Callie Metsala and the relay teams led the Cobbers at the season-opening meet of the year.
Metsala won the 200-yard individual medley and 100-yard breaststroke, while the quartet of Chea Baugh, Brienna Timm, Christina Moore and Tinsley Porter won the 200-yard freestyle relay in Concordia's 129-83 loss to the University of Jamestown.
In addition to the wins in 200-yard IM and 100-yard breaststroke events, Concordia had six other individuals record runner-up finishes.
Metsala's first win of the year came in the 200 IM, where she touched the wall in 2:20.45 and won the event by 1.04 seconds. Her finishing time was faster than any other Cobber swam last year and was only 2.20 seconds away from the 22-year-old school record.
Metsala doubled up her win total when she clocked a 1:12.15 in the 100-yard breaststroke and won the event by a full 7 seconds. Her time would have been less than a second out of qualifying for the B final at last year's MIAC Championship Meet.
The 200-yard freestyle relay team made it back-to-back event wins for the Cobbers to finish off the meet. After Metsala won the 200-yd breaststroke – Baugh, Timm, Moore and Porter raced to a 1:57.50 and claimed the victory by 4.28 seconds.
The 200-yard medley relay team of Moore, Metsala, Baugh and Hailey Jaeger started the meet by recording a time of 2:01.34, which was 3.26 seconds faster than the Cobber team posted in the second meet of last season.
Jaeger also came through with a pair of second-place finishes on Thursday. She clocked a 27.00 in the 50-yard freestyle and then went 59.83 in the 100-yard freestyle.
Timm, Moore, Lindsey Biebl and Haley Juetten had the other runner-up finishes for CC. Timm swam a 6:26.05 in the 500-yard freestyle, Moore was second in the 100-yard backstroke with a mark of 1:10.96, which was 2 seconds faster than her time at the start of last year, Biebl swam the first 1000-yard freestyle of her career and came home in 14:44.81 while Juetten gave the Cobbers a 1-2 finish in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:19.15.
Junior diver Kiernan Darling upped her scores from last year's first meet and came away with a second-place finish in the 1-meter diving competition. She scored 165.70 in the first section and then recorded 217.07 in the second half of the event.
UP NEXT: Concordia will have its first road meet of the year when they compete at Minn.-Morris in a double-dual meet with Southwest MN State on Friday, Nov. 3.
