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An accomplished swimmer and coach in the State University of New York Conference, this was coach Paul Waas Jr.'s first MIAC championship. “The conferences [MIAC and New York] are comparable,” Waas said. “The men's division is stronger here, but the women's field is comparable.” Waas said that the roster for the championship was typical for a conference the size of MIAC.

This past week Waas started looking at the times from the competition and began reflecting upon them, something he had not done most of the regular season. “During the MIAC I really did not look at the other teams. My entire attention was devoted to our team and how we were doing,” Waas said.

Under NCAA and MIAC regulations the maximum number of swimmers and divers a team can bring to the championship is 20. Swimmers count as one person and three divers equal one person. Waas brought 11 women and eight men to the championship.

The MIAC conference is “the meet we go for,” Waas said. The event contained a number of “big events,” said Waas.

Among these was sophomore Jonathan Tapia-Rodriguez’s earning of All-MIAC honors after completing the 200-yard butterfly and placing third. Tapia-Rodriguez finished with a time of 1:53.73 which places him for a ‘B’ cut qualifying time. Tapia-Rodriguez’s time also smashed a decade-old record at Hamline.

Tapia-Rodriguez, Jake Burgess, Ryan Beckman, and Will Khoury-Hanold joined up for the 400-yard freestyle relay with a time of 3:11.06, another new record for Hamline.

Diver Jake Kruger had a fifth-place finish in the three-meter dive. Khoury-Hanold reached the ‘A’ finals of the 200-yard backstroke, finishing seventh place with a time of 1:59.61.

First-year Teddy Paterson placed 12th in the 1650-yard freestyle. Burgess and Beckman placed 10th and 13th, respectively, in the 100-yard freestyle.

The Piper women’s team took seventh place in the team competition with 222 points total.

Junior Dana Ketcher finished the preliminaries of the 50-yard freestyle with the fastest time in the conference at 24.47. At the final competition Ketcher cut that time down to an amazing 24.38 Ketcher’s time unseats Piper alum Mary Kavany, who set the previous record in 1986. This is the first women's swimming and diving record at Hamline to go down in 11 seasons. Ketcher earned All-MIAC accolades for taking second in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 53.47
The Piper’s Swimming and Diving teams travel to Houston, Texas next month for the NCAA championships on March 15-17.