by LINDSEY HUNTSINGER
Sports Reporter

Eight teams from across the Southeast met at the Student Recreation Center for the Appalachian State club swim team’s largest home meet in club history.

Club teams from UNC-Charlotte, UNC-Wilmington, UNC-Greensboro, NC State, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Clemson, Elon and Appalachian were in attendance inaugural App State Swimming Fall Invitational.

“The number of teams was exactly what I wanted. There were eight teams, we didn’t go over 200 people so it was manageable,” club president and senior broadcasting electronic media major Kenny E. Christensen said. “We were scared when we sent out the information because there were about 15 teams that showed interest, and our facility is really not made for that.”

Last spring the team hosted their first home meet in the SRC. The team’s confidence was boosted when they gained hosting experience and the small meet under their belts.

After last season’s success they decided to host a larger meet to give teams the chance to compete, and spend time in Boone.

“This was our second home meet ever,” club secretary Alyssa M. Mulhall, senior elementary education major said. “It was tripled in size from last year. It only lasted four hours, so it was a lot quicker than we expected.”

Geology and broadcasting electronic media major Kenny E. Christtensen (c), swim club president, takes off at the start of the men's 100-meter backstroke. Photo by Holt Menzies

Since the club is fairly inexperienced and unsure about hosting meets, they limited Saturday’s meet to only shorter events to make sure they had enough time to complete scheduled events without rushing.

“We decided to stick with basics just because of time,” Christensen said. “We didn’t do one of major distance just in case it was running too long, and we left out a relay that is usually in most meets. We want to try and add that back in at the next meet.”

Travel worries were one of the other reasons the team limited the length of the meet. Since club sports are not usually university-funded, some teams opted to travel rather than spend the night in Boone.

“We did not do the long events because we weren’t sure how long they’d last,” club treasurer and senior accounting major Ben T. Pickell said. “There were people traveling from Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech and that’s a good four hour drive.”

Despite early worries from team leaders about their ability to effectively host a large meet, Saturday’s events went off with very few glitches.

“The only problem we had is that the pool’s acoustics are terrible,” Mulhall said. “We tried to use a starter system, but you couldn’t really understand it, so we had to use an air horn instead.”

The team depended on contributions from both club officers and club members to successfully pull all the aspects of the meet together.

“It took a lot from the officers to get the meet started. The swim team members helped clean up the pool and set up the events,” Pickell said. “One girl had Meet Manager, which is computer software that helped a lot. It takes a lot of little things from each person.”

Not only did the team pull off a successfully hosted event, they were also able to come out with a first place overall finish in the meet.

Individually the men’s team finished second to Virginia Tech, and the women were second to NC State, but with the two team’s combined scores Appalachian was able to take home first place overall.

“It’s really good for our team [to win]. We had a lot of really good freshmen that came in and did really well,” Christensen said. “We would have liked to have won first individually especially at home, but Virginia Tech brought 18 monsters and they were pretty stacked, and NC State just had more female swimmers than we did.”

This weekend’s meet has prompted the team to try to host an even more complex two-day meet in the future.

“It was really reward[ing] for it to have gone so well,” Mulhall said. “We now have the feeling for hosting it, so next year we’ll have a two-day meet and have longer events. Most teams came and stayed over night and they love Boone, so the goal for next year is to host a two-day meet.”

The team will travel to Elon Nov. 7 for their second meet of the season.

“Hopefully the guys will be able to go and defend their title at Elon, and I know the girls we have on the team this year will definitely go and make a run at it this year,” Christensen said.

Photo by Holt Menzies  |  Chief Photographer

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