Rams Double Down on Dual Decisions

Disappointment is coming in one form or another.

A spurt of time or a season. Mental and physical. A race, a meet, a stretch of training which drags down a competitor. Teams are not immune.

Coaches know it's coming, even if they can't exactly plan for it. All they really care about is how the person is question is going to respond. And when. Christopher Woodard spent Saturday watching his team respond to a result a year later, part of it coming about with those on his roster taking an immediate approach to handling an issue at hand.

The result was a pair of dual victories at EPIC, toppling Washington State 149-145, Colorado Mesa 204-96. In the case of the Cougars, it represented a victory in the first showdown between the two as Pac-12 members, a season after WSU controlled a dual at their place.

That day, the Rams won only two races – both backstrokes by Tess Whineray. On this day, diving counted (Wazzu doesn't have a diving program) and Sydney Ovesen not only won on both boards but hit Zones cuts in the process as well as posting a top-five program score.

The Fort Collins product performed on boards she's competed on more often than any other facility, yet she still wasn't filled with confidence when the day started. She was still thinking about her first showing at Air Force as part of the Front Range Invitational, scores which left her unsettled.

Then in warmups, she had a monumental flop prepping a double back, landing flat on her back. Pain immediately filled her body as all the air in it exited. She wasn't even sure she could swim back comfortably to the side. Lovely.

Actually, it was.

"I feel like personally when I do mess up something then I'm like, 'OK, it's not that big of a deal. The world didn't end. I'm still here. I'm still moving. I'm still doing everything," Ovesen said. 'It kind of just like makes me realize okay, it's OK to take a step back. Just breathe."

The all-conference diver let muscle memory take over, and about four dives into the day, she was feeling upbeat. Her day started on 1-meter, where her 280.20 led a 1-2 finish with teammate Juliana Dodd, the number representing her first Zones cut of the season.

Then came the 3-meter with the dive she flopped in warmup. She soared when the scores counted, again leading a 1-2-3 finish with Dodd and then Jackie Oh, again hitting a Zones cut but more importantly scoring a 304.95, ranking fourth in program history for the event.

To her, it represented more than a line in the record book, it was growth. As her consistency and difficulty improves, her outlook is keeping pace. The pressure she used to dread no longer feels like a roadblock. She does a breathing exercise to calm her heart rate to help ease her mind.

"I think that it's a lot more of a privilege to have that pressure. It's just a lot of it before was a lot of negative," she said. "Like, I don't know if I'm gonna be able to live up to the standards that I set last year. Now that I'm here, I'm realizing it doesn't matter what I do and that pressure from people is just support."

While the diving was taking place at one end of the pool, the swimmers were doing their thing. Washington State is fast and deep, led by All-American sprinter Darcy Revitt. The Cougars were the runner up in the Mountain West last season, winning in the lanes but lacking any diving numbers, and in the dual meeting with CSU, not only won nearly every race but stacked some 1-2 and even 1-2-3 finishes.

Quinn Whorley made it clear the Rams weren't going to back down, winning the 1000-yard freestyle in a time just a shade off her personal best. The sophomore struggled down the stretch of her debut season with shoulder pain but has shown in the early part of the season she is regaining form.

She followed up with a fourth-place showing in the 500 free, as well. Whineray was back doing her thing by winning both backstrokes, and Evie Munz dropped a personal best to win the 200 butterfly and freshman Kayda Geyer not only won three races, she posted top-10 times as well.

Munz has come out hot the first two meets, her 2:01.68 in the 200 fly coming in at No. 10 on the school ledger. Geyer was understandably tired and a bit beaten up after a long summer, one where she won a junior national championship and placed at the Junior Pan Pacific meet. A bit more refreshed, she won the 100 breaststroke (1:01.64, No. 3 at CSU), the 200 breast (2:13.52, No. 2) and the 200 individual medley (2:03.21, No. 8).

"It really was just a matter of time before she was able to put her foot down on the pedal and today it looks like that's the start of it. She's going to start accelerating for the rest of the year," Woodard said. "With Quinn, I think the biggest thing is knowing that she, in the spring, really had shoulder problems and she really attended to that over the summer. And even now, she's doing everything she needs to do to recover session to session. I know that can be a grind on athletes, but she has come to the training situations, and she's not used that as an excuse.

"She's like, I'm going to push through and then I'll go get my treatment. So I think that's starting to build confidence. Like, I'm going to be in pain, but I can handle it."

It wasn't just the wins and the diving, it was what the Rams were doing after the first person touched. Those extra points in races, particularly not letting the Cougars control entire events, made a difference.

Lauren Golden was part of that. She was fourth overall in the 50 and freestyles, then swam the third leg on the 400 free relay, a quad which went without Mia Axelman who had swam an early relay and took on all three sprint frees.

The freshman wasn't happy with her first meet, so she regrouped and did something about the results. Part of that was just recovering.

"The first or second week I was here, I pulled my hamstring, and at that first meet I was still kind of recovering from that," she said. "My starts weren't as explosive, and I just didn't have that front end speed that I normally do, so I definitely feel like I had that back at this meet, and I was back to my quote-unquote normal self.

"I think that I learned that I can definitely compete in this conference, and that I can be a competitive teammate and score points, and that's what I aim to do coming into here, so I'm glad to see that I'm achieving those goals."

Normal for her is challenging for spots. She's going to train hard and challenge Axelman, the leader of the sprint freestyle group. No matter her class standing, her inner competitor isn't thinking wait for her time, it's create her spot. Not just in the lineup, but on relays. Not just any relay, the top one.

Then again, she said all the freshman feel the same way.

"I always want to be on that 'A' relay. I want to contribute to the team any way that I can, and I feel like for me, having that first spot in the relay, it's important to me to prove to myself, too, that I deserve to be here," she said. ""I think we all have that mentality. We all know our team's goals and how we want to contribute to that, so I feel like as a group we're all set on that."

For a team which went splat a year ago – and a diver who did the same before the day started – the responsive and recovery was all that really mattered.

What Woodard saw in Golden was maturity. What he saw in his team was an edge.

"The reality is we're always going to preach all in and we do need that depth because when it comes down to tight races like this, those seconds, thirds, fourths, and even fifths, they really do matter," Woodard said. "But if you don't have somebody winning a race, you've got a long hill to climb. So yeah, we needed some big dogs today, and they showed up."

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Players Mentioned

Mia Axelman

Juliana Dodd

Kayda Geyer

Lauren Golden

Evie Munz

Jackie Oh

Sydney Ovesen

Tess Whineray

Quinn Whorley