Four members of the Seattle University swim teams earned All-Mountain Pacific Sports Federation honors for their performances during the MPSF Swimming and Diving Championships held last weekend at East Los Angeles College.
Jordan Anderson (Newberg, Ore.) earned first team honors after a third place finish in the 100 freestyle with a time of 44.58 seconds in the final, just 2/100ths of a second off his own school record. Anderson also picked up second team honors in two other events: the 50 freestyle after finishing fourth in 20.42 seconds and the 100 butterfly with a fifth place finish in 48.44 seconds, the second-fastest time in school history.
In the 200 backstroke, both Joe Wertz (Richland, Wash.) and Nicolas Morrell (Bend, Ore.) earned second team recognition for their performances, with Wertz finishing in a tie for fourth with a time of 1:48.01 and Morrell posting a sixth place finish in 1:48.20. Earlier in the meet, Wertz set the school record in the 100 backstroke with a leadoff leg of 50.03 seconds in the 400 medley relay.
Alexis Morehouse (Vancouver, Wash.) was a two-time second team honoree, first by finishing fourth in the 100 breaststroke final with a NCAA B-cut qualifying time of 1:02.93. She followed that with a fifth place finish in the 200 breaststroke with a time of 2:16.90, after posting another B-cut qualifying time in the preliminaries with a mark of 2:15.62. Morehouse also set the school record in the 200 individual medley, finishing 14th overall with a time of 2:04.97.
Three other school records fell during the four-day competition, beginning with the quartet of Murray Longbotham (Mercer Island, Wash.), Morrell, Wertz, and Tomas Mendez-Beck (Hillsboro, Ore.) combining for a NCAA B-cut qualifying time of 6:40.48 in the men's 800 freestyle relay, two-and-a-half seconds faster than the previous mark set at last year's conference championships.
On Friday, Longbotham set a new school record in the men's 500 freestyle, first in the preliminaries with a time of 4:32.06 to qualify for the "B" final. In that race, he finished second with a time of 4:31.14, posting a 10th place finish overall. Saturday, Bethany Gehrke (Lynnwood, Wash.) smashed the school record in the women's 400 individual medley by over five seconds with a time of 4:26.16.
The Seattle University women's swim team will join 16 other Redhawk sports in moving to the Western Athletic Conference July 1, 2012. Meanwhile, the men's swim team, along with the men's soccer program, will remain in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation.
