Villanova faced West Virginia University and Iowa St. in a tri-meet at West Virginia on Saturday. The Wildcat women defeated Iowa, 180-119, but fell to WVU, 125.5-173.5. The men’s team also lost to WVU, 234-66. 

The ‘Cats had seven first-place finishes and a tie for first in the 200 free from junior Molly Benson. Benson also finished first in the women’s 500 free with a time of 4:57.18.

One win belonged to the men, with junior Charlie Hinckley touching first in the 500 free with a time of 4:31.12.

“The times that we posted this past weekend were probably some of the best we’ve seen in terms of in-season competition in a really long time,” head coach Rick Simpson said. “We actually had some athletes post personal bests, which is great…I don’t think there were really any performances we were really unhappy with.”

The first win of the day came from distance/freestyler freshman Marlene Blanke with a 17:02.61 in the 1650 free. The women’s team also swept backstroke events. Junior Audrey Pastorek finished first in both the 100 and 200 back and sophomore Arabella Lee finished second in the 100 back. 

In the men’s heat, Hinckley took third, only 0.45 seconds behind WVU’s second place swimmer. Junior freestyle/butterfly swimmer Lainey Quinones was 0.23 seconds behind WVU’s first place win in the women’s 100 free, finishing with a time of 50.83. 

Another close race was the women’s 100 yard breaststroke. Graduate student Maggie Kleinsmith finished third, 0.01 seconds out of second. In the final women’s event of the day, the women narrowly avoided third place with a net time of 3:36.63, only 0.26 seconds ahead of Iowa State’s third place team and 1.54 seconds behind West Virginia’s winning group.

The men’s 200 yard butterfly was a challenge for the ‘Cats, who finished with first through third places, all within 0.86 seconds of each other. First and second place went to the Mountaineers, but senior fly/IM swimmer Nolan Danus scored big for the ‘Cats, coming in third place. 

The men also took third through fifth place in the 100 yard freestyle, and where junior free/backswimmer Patrick Hemingway was only 0.9 seconds from securing a second place finish.

After about an hour of not super competitive events, you see the athletes lose their edge a little bit,” Simpson said. “This weekend, what I think helped was that we saw, especially on the women’s side, that every event was almost a ‘too close to call’ finish, which I think helps the energy in the room.”

The ‘Cats will travel to Penn State on Friday, Feb. 2. They will be back at home on Feb. 3 to celebrate the team’s seniors at Sprintfest 2024. These will be Villanova’s last regular season events before the Big East and NCAA Championships begin in the coming weeks.

“We have the taper, which is when we start to back off of the workload and let people recover so people start getting a little less tired, a little more energized, certainly more focused,” Simpson said. “We don’t really have a challenge, keeping them motivated between this weekend and the college championship, which is a good technique for our sport.” 

Following Sprintfest and the well-loved All-Sport relay competition taking place after the senior celebration, the team shifts its focus to the postseason.