Kalamazoo, Mich. — The Aquinas men's swim and dive team took to the road today (Oct. 21) for their second back-to-back contest this week, going up against Kalamazoo at the Kalamazoo College Natatorium. The Kalamazoo Hornets went on to show that they are a force to be met with in the pool and boards. The Hornets went on to outlast the Saints, 138-95.

The men put up a fight with strong swims, but the Kalamazoo men out-touched the second-place 200 medley relay of Evan Hurtado, Cesar Robles, Titus Smith and Luke Martin. The B medley relay of Ian Clapp, Tony Parlato, Collin Neely and Conrad Eichbauer closely followed in third.

Sophomore Christopher Uzunoe-Chin secured second place in the 1,000 freestyle with an 11:51.75.

Sophomore captain duo Luke Martin (2:08.77) and Ian Clapp (2:11.86) finished in second and third respectively.

All four 200 backstrokers scored valuable team points, led by Smith in second place (2:02.34), Clapp in third (2:07.07), Neely (2:17.45) and Joe Rush in fifth (2:31.25).

Eichbauer and Hurtado finished second (5:12.25) and third (5:19.18) respectively in the 500 freestyle.

Freshman Evan Bennett shattered the school record on the 1M board by nearly 20 points, winning the event with 252.68 points. Troy Borrero finished in second with 214.65 points. Bennett won the 3M board with 206.1 points, while Borrero finished third with 170.7 points.

Martin and Robles dominated the 200 breaststroke, finishing first (2:19.26) and second (2:19.93) - the highest individual finishes across all events of the day. Parlato scored in fifth place.

The 200 freestyle relay brought a close battle, with the team of Smith, Matt Dumbsky, Collin Alward, and Hurtado just falling to Kalamazoo's relay by .03 seconds.

Head coach Kristy Hepp made theses comments about today's performance, "Our divers had a standout day today and just continue to improve each meet. Evan Bennett is fearless and will continue to add harder dives, ...Troy [is] building confidence on the 3M boards. [The divers] are like a family and push each other every day in practice. At meets, they're scoring the most points for the team overall. We will continue to see big things out of them this year!"

"Kalamazoo provided a great competitive atmosphere for the closest dual meet of the season. Overall, I am so proud of the swimmers and divers on both the men's and women's side. We add multiple events to our all-time top 10 list each meet, and we've been able to play around with a few individuals' main events to make the strongest lineup at our conference championship. Our women rose to the occasion and competed at a level I haven't seen since starting this team two years ago, and it showed with the final results of the day.  Our men battled well today and displayed consistency, but we just couldn't pull out an overall victory. It was a great day of learning how to control emotions and mentality in the middle of our most challenging training block to date."

The Saints are back to splishing and splashing next week (Oct. 28). AQ will return to the Elkhart Aquatic Center for a doubleheader (2 p.m.) against Bethel and Lindsey Wilson, two teams Aquinas has already faced. The Saints lost to Bethel by the margin of 158-138 in their previous encounter. Whereas AQ placed one spot underneath Lindsey Wilson in the LWC Fall Frenzy Invite.