The University of Indianapolis swim and dive teams is headed for the end of its season after their GLVC conference championships Feb. 11-16 where the women’s team came in second and the men’s team landed third.
The swim team trains all season for the GLVC conference championship, senior swimmer Andile Bekker said. While part of the team works to achieve the best swimming speeds and diving scores for the national championship in March, the other half works on beating their personal records, Bekker said. The men’s team placed third behind Drury University and McKendree University, and the women’s team placed second behind Drury by 70 points, equivalent to one relay event, sophomore swimmer Audrey Axton said. GLVC awarded Cedric Buessing Swimmer of the Year, making him the first-ever student-athlete awarded four of these. UIndy’s Alexis Lumaj won Diver of the Year and set a new GLVC record of 521.05 points for 3-meter diving, according to UIndy Athletics.
Despite recent wins, Axton said the swim teams struggled throughout the season, particularly at a mid-season meet at Denison University. The mid-season meet was a time for the teams to evaluate if they were prepared and motivated for the postseason, Axton said the team struggled with relays, their speeds were not improving and the teams’ mentalities were slipping.
“But honestly, we needed Denison to be a bad meet to give us a reason to fight harder for conference,” Axton said. “We hit rock bottom. We hit a time where none of us were dropping speeds, and none of us were able to be a bright and happy spirit on the team. When you go from that, you can’t go down any further. You go back to practice, put in the work, put in the grind, because you all now have a common goal to not have conference be how Denison was.”
Bekker said the goal for the swim team is to win nationals and conference, and become the best swimmers in Division II. He said there was still time to improve after the Denison meet with the Last Chance Meet still to come.
“Everyone gears towards peaking their performance either at conference or at nationals,” Bekker said. “ I think that’s why our coach isn’t so worried about the results that we have during the season, because they know that the end of the season is what’s most important.”
Axton said the key to the swim team’s success this season is the support of teammates. She said a lot of people struggled with injuries throughout the season, but were able to put the work in and recover in time for the end of the season thanks to their team’s support system.
“We would not have done as well as we did this season if it wouldn’t have been for people that were picking each other up and encouraging each other,” Axton said.
For Bekker, his swim at GVLC meet was the last of his collegiate career. He finished the competition with two swims within a 10th of a second of his lifetime best. He could have taken the chance to improve his score at the Last Chance Meet Feb. 21-22, but he said he would rather end the season with his team at GVLC rather than stress out about the numbers. Bekker is not finished with swimming, though, and hopes to swim for his home country, Botswana, in the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028. Until then, he is working on creating a documentary about Buessing for his honors project.
For the rest of the team, they are focused on improving their scores at the Last Chance Meet and hope to win nationals, Axton said. After that, the swimmers will continue training and preparing for their next season.
“With off-season, we’ll be able to have more events outside of the water once it gets warmer,” Axton said. “We always like to play sand volleyball and remind ourselves why we’re a team, why we chose to be at UIndy and why we chose swimming. We’re all in it together, in and out of the pool.”
