After the Central Connecticut swimming and diving team competed in two tri-meets during their first two weeks of competition, it narrowed to a dual meet this past Saturday, facing the New Hampshire Wildcats. Many events were neck in neck for first place, but Central ended up falling short with a 161-121 score.

Central boasted six wins from the meet, more than they had won in the previous events. This included wins in three of the six freestyle events, both of their backstroke events, and one of the two medley events, but lost in the breaststroke and butterfly events.

This stays consistent with last week’s performance as Central was again dominant in their backstroke events. Freshman Jeannette King gave impressive performances in both meets, taking first in the 100-yard backstroke, while senior Aidan Devers won the 200-yard backstroke event after just getting edged out by one second in the same event last week.

The freestyle relay teams turned out striking performances by starting the meet off in second place with the team comprised of freshman Mariana Espino, junior Valentina Gomez, senior Kaitlyn Troy and King. Troy and King also joined freshman Katie Czulewicz and junior Grace Fredericks to win the 200-yard freestyle relay. Czulewicz, King and Troy were part of the winning 400-yard freestyle relay team in last week’s tri-meet with UConn and Southern Connecticut.

King and Czulewicz continued their freestyle successes this meet when they came in first and second place respectively in the 100-yard freestyle, Czulewicz also coming in second in the 200-yard freestyle. Rounding out their freestyle wins was Gomez winning the hefty 1,000-yard freestyle, an event that she won during the team’s season opener against Sacred Heart and LIU Post.

Devers, after her strong start to the season last week, won her 400-yard individual medley once again, enriching the strong performance by Central in their medley events this season. She also finished second in the 500-yard freestyle event, adding to her win in backstroke.

This week’s butterfly events were very close as Gomez, the winner of both of the first meet’s butterfly events, looked to continue her dominant efforts. She came in second in the 100-yard butterfly event by less than one second, and in the 200-yard butterfly, came one one-hundredth of a second away from first.

Freshman Alex Lindgren came in second and third in the 100 and 200-yard breaststroke events respectively, who also came in second by a tenth of a second next to Espino in last week’s 100-yard breaststroke. She was also part of the team that came in fourth in the 200-yard medley relay.

Central looks to continue their improving freestyle efforts in the 1,000, 100 and 200-yard freestyle events, while also looking to add more victories to their dominant backstroke track record next Friday, Nov. 2 and Saturday Nov. 3, when the Blue Devils will be going to Bryant University to face the Bulldogs and the Wagner Seahawks in the season’s third tri-meet. This is the beginning of the competition with schools in the Northeast Conference.