The University of Rhode Island women’s swim and dive team suffered a 153-88 defeat to Stony Brook in the team’s final full-team meet of the regular season on Saturday.
Rhode Island’s struggles coming out of winter break continued, marking the third dual meet loss in four meets.
“It’s definitely been a long stretch for us,” URI Head Coach Lilli Falconer Deering said. “Having four meets in a row, back-to-back weekends, has definitely been challenging.”
Stony Brook took the first four events, helping to build an early 57-17 lead. The Seawolves managed to take every individual swim event in the meet, but the Rams responded from the diving boards.
Fourth-year diver Olivia Winslow swept the diving events for a seventh time this season. In the one-meter, she outperformed the competition by over 12 points with a score of 280.20. She had similar success in the three-meter, winning the event by over 19 points.
The Rams were also represented in the one-meter by second-year diver Kelsey Kreuscher, placing second. First-year diver Emily Whiteneck earned second place in the three-meter for URI, with Kreuscher taking third to secure Rhody’s lone 1-2-3 finish of the meet.
Winslow will turn her attention to the Atlantic 10 Conference Championship, where she placed ninth and 10th in the one and three-meter dives last year, respectively.
“Liv has built up a lot of confidence over the last season,” Deering said. “This will be her fourth A-10’s, she knows what to expect. She knows that the level of competition increases significantly when we get there. I think she’s excited, I think she’s ready.”
In the pool, Rhode Island received a second-place finish from fourth-year Sarah Koenig in the 200-yard individual medley. Koenig finished just .15 seconds behind first place in her best placement this season.
“She’s always kind of been a very strong IMer for us,” Deering said. “I thought it was one of the best races that she’s had at a dual meet in that event; it was perfectly split by every 50.”
URI will send five swimmers to Boston University for the Boston Winter Open starting on Friday: first-years Meghan Pauley, Chloe Robinson, second-years Ella Arbeiter, Lauren Biglow and third-year Cate Carboni.
“This is a new meet for us; this is the group that will be competing and finishing their season this weekend,” Deering said. “We’re treating this as seriously as we would treat any other championship meet.”
The rest of the Rams will focus on recovering ahead of the A-10 Championship, beginning on Feb. 18 in Hampton, VA.
“The goal is obviously to swim as fast as we can at the end of the season,” Deering said. “That’s been the plan all along, and we’ve had meets in between, but the end goal was always to make sure that A-10’s was our best A-10 finish that we can have.”
Last season, swim and dive saw its best performance in the championship meet since 2017, finishing with 189 points to place 10th out of 11 teams.
