The Illinois swimming and diving team finished second in a field of eight at the three-day Miami (Ohio) Invitational over the weekend as many Illini swimmers put their name in the record book.

“I was impressed with the ladies’ overall level of toughness, mentally and physically, each session,” head coach Sue Novitsky said. “The athletes continued to make adjustments from race to race and that is a big improvement for us and shows that we are maturing as athletes and as a team.”

The Illini had 17 top-10 finishes in program history and 31 lifetime bests during the three days of competition at the Corwin M. Nixon Aquatic Center.  

The 800-yard freestyle relay team of Gabbie Stecker, Megan Marchuk, Amelia Schilling and Courtney Pope started the weekend with a first-place finish of 7 minutes, 19.05 seconds, making it the fastest time in Illinois history.

Junior Alison Meng won the 100 backstroke with a time of 54.55, which placed her first in Illini history. She also placed first in the 100 butterfly (55.20), which placed her second on Illinois’ all-time fastest individuals list and earning her ninth event victory of the season.

The Illini continued with two more relay event victories. The 400 medley relay of Meng, Erica Lynn, Sarah Sykstus and Pope won with a time of 3:44.77 while the 200 medley team of Meng, Lynn, Lori Lynn and Pope finished with a time of 1:42.71. Both had record finishes that placed third in Illini history.

Senior Courtney Pope won the 200 free with a time of 1:49.25. It placed her sixth all-time among Illini.

The past month has been filled with hard practice and attention to detail. The last time the Orange and Blue competed against Kansas in November, the team broke school records. Novitsky was proud of those achievements, and hoped that broken records would motivate other swimmers to do the same.

“With the way the team has been training we thought there could be some changes to the record books,” Novitsky said.

Illinois finished second at the eight-team field invitational with 1704.5 points. Host Miami (Ohio) finished first with 2,332 points.

The team will have another month off from competition before it hosts Rutgers on Jan. 10.

“We are in a good place heading into the second part of the season,” Novitsky said. “Now we will get back to work in the pool and continue to work on making improvements.”

Michal can be reached at [email protected] and @bennythebull94.