The Brandeis University swimming and diving team (BUSDT) opened their 2018-2019 season with a pentathlon meet at Roger Williams University (RWU) on Oct. 6. Under the coaching of recently appointed Head Coach Nicole Carter, the Judges took home the victory with Tamir Zitelny ’20 winning the pentathlon and rookie Claire Xu ’22 winning overall for the women’s division.
The pentathlon format calls for each swimmer to swim five events—100 yards of each of the four strokes, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle, and a 100-yard individual medley (IM). The swimmer with the fastest combined time wins the meet.
The men’s team was victorious in all five individual events, in addition to Zitelny’s overall win. Zitelny finished first in the pentathlon with a time of 4:44.71, a nearly six second lead before any other competitor. This is Zitelny’s first pentathlon win, having placed second in both his freshman and sophomore seasons. He won four of his five races: the butterfly with a time of 52.20 seconds, the backstroke with a time of 55.88, the freestyle with a time of 49.25 and the IM with a time of 57.31.
Rookie Brendon Lu ’22 came in third overall, placing second in the breaststroke with a time of 1:02.64, third in the IM with a time of 57.65 seconds and fourth in the butterfly with a time of 55.67. Daniel Wohl ’21 also had a strong performance, winning the breaststroke race with a time of 1:02.35, and securing second-place finishes in the freestyle with a time of 49.25 seconds and the butterfly with a time of 55.42 seconds. Wohl fell out of the overall standings due to a disqualification in the IM event.
On the women’s side, Xu won with a cumulative time of 5:32.76. Xu placed first in the 100 IM with a time of 1:06.15, second in the butterfly with a time of 1:04.13, fourth in the backstroke with a time of 58.08 seconds and sixth in the breaststroke with a time of 1:16.10.
Senior Kylie Herman ’19 placed fourth overall, placing third in the butterfly with a time of 1:04.19, fourth in the freestyle at 58.08 seconds and fifth in the IM with a time of 1:08.07. Sophomores Audrey Kim ’21 and Emily McGovern ’21 produced two second-place finishes in the backstroke and the breaststroke races respectively, with Kim finishing with a time of 1:04.14 and McGovern finishing with a time of 1:12.70. Olivia Stebbins ’22 and Gazelle Umbay ’22 earned fifth-place finishes in the breaststroke and the butterfly; Stebbins finished the breaststroke with a time of 1:14.02 and Umbay finished the butterfly with a time of 1:04.61.
The Judges will travel to compete against the Hartwick College Hawks on Oct. 19 and Vassar College Brewers on Oct. 20 for their first dual meets of the season.
