It’s never too early to set some records. The Maroons enjoyed a dominating performance over the weekend at the Phoenix Fall Classic, with the men taking second out of nine schools and the women destroying the 10-team field.

Even with these marks, though, the strong team performances were overshadowed by the incredible individual achievements of the Maroons, with the men and women recording 14 NCAA provisional performances and setting six new school records.

“I was happy with the team’s performance this past weekend. It was by far our best mid-season meet ever,” said Head Coach Jason Weber. “We expected to win a lot of events and our goal was to post some fast times and high scores in an effort to break some records and achieve some NCAA qualifying times. I just don’t think any of us expected to do this well.”

The Maroons performed better than well.

The men were led by first-year UAA Athlete of the Week Andrew Angeles, who set NCAA “B” provisional marks in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 57.54 and another “B” mark in the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 2:04.96. The women were led by UAA Athlete of the Week third-year Becky Schmidt, who recorded “B” scores in the 1m dive with a score of 449.55 and the 3m dive with a score of 449.10. Both of Schmidt’s marks are also school records.

In addition to Schmidt, the men’s and women’s 200-yard freestyle relay set new records of 1:25.09 and 1:36.91 respectively, first-year Andrew Salomon set a record 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:32.45, and fellow first-year, George Gvakharia, marked a new 200-yard backstroke record of 1:51.98.

Records were not the only thing being set, as many Maroons recorded NCAA “B” cut times, as well. Fourth-year Tara Levens, third-years Kathleen Taylor and Bobby Morales, second-year Eric Hallmann, and first-years Salomon and Matt Staab reached the “B” standards in addition to Angeles and Schmidt.

Although the men did not get the win in the face of stiff competition, the Maroons were still more than satisfied with their performance.

“Our main goal was to record some good performances, but winning was something we still wanted to do,” said Weber. “We’re not disappointed about the meet because of it though.”

Following this meet the Maroons look forward to a long winter break where they can finally get some intensive training without worrying about schoolwork.

“We will be putting in a lot of tough training; much more than they can do here with school and everything else going on,” said Weber.