Complete Meet Results

DECORAH, Iowa. — It's that time of the year again, when Saint Mary's University swimming and diving coach Eric Lindquist trains his Cardinals hard during the week, then expects them to drag their weary bodies to the pool again on a Saturday afternoon for a dual meet.

It's tough to compete when your muscles ache, but Lindquist is looking at the big picture — the MIAC Championships. And if he wants his swimmers to be at their best for the conference meet, they've got to train hard early on.

That's why the SMU head coach wasn't overly concerned with the final team scores Saturday afternoon. After all, a 127-93 men's loss and a 166-63 women's loss doesn't really do a whole lot to Lindquist's picture.

"We've been training them very hard all week, and I think part of that fatigue showed up (Saturday)," admitted Lindquist, whose teams managed just four individual first-place finishes — two by freshman diver Erik Oksnevad (Blaine, Minn.) — in the two duals. "All things considered, I was pretty happy with the way we swam.

"We can't put too much stock in these early-season meets, because we are training extra-hard, and that's going to affect the way they perform," Lindquist continued. "We're keeping ourselves focused on the end (of the season) and the conference championships."

Oksnevad won both the one-meter and three-meter competitions, and while his totals — 184.0 in the 1-meter and 247.58 in the 3-meter — weren't up there with his record-breaking performances of a week ago, they were still head and shoulders above any of the other divers.

Steve Sadorf (Chicago, Ill.) and Scott Schultz (Cary, Ill.) picked up SMU's other individual victories. Sadorf touched the wall in 1:06.76 to win the 100 breaststroke, while Schultz dominated the field in winning the 100 backstroke (57.84). The SMU 200 medley relay team of Schultz, Sadorf, Kyle Van Lith (Appleton, Wis.) and Sean Gibson (Chicago, Ill.) touched the wall first in 1:47.36, while Van Lith chipped in a second-place effort in the 50 freestyle (23.71).

On the women's side, Heidi Andre (Fairbanks, Alaska), posted second-place showings in the 500 (5:55.34) and 1,000 freestyle (12:10.19), while Lindsay Salisbury (Waukesha, Wis.) recorded a second-place time of 27:30 in the 50 freestyle and Holly Fujii (Elk Grove, Ill.) was second in both the one-meter (134.60) and three-meter (147.65) diving competitions.

"We had some very, very good swims," said Lindquist. "Hopefully we can continue that trend. We've got some hard training ahead of us, so we're just going to keep working."