Two records broken

By Jesse Temple     Feb 8, 2009

Richard Gwin
Mel Heyrman finishes strong in lane six. KU hosted Iowa State for a swim meet on Saturday.

Maria Mayrovich might just take her raggedy, old speed suit with her when she completes her Kansas University swimming career next month.

At the very least, someone should consider presenting it to the KU senior as a gift given her breathtaking performance while wearing the black suit during KU’s 182-113 dual meet victory against Iowa State Saturday morning at Robinson Natatorium.

“Those are old suits,” Mayrovich said. “We can use them whenever. We pretty much train in them, and they’re really stretched out. But they still work. See how powerful they are?”

Mayrovich swam the lead leg of her team’s 200-yard free relay — the final event of KU’s regular season — and helped the Jayhawks seize control early, as they broke a five-year-old school record with a time of 1:32.77.

But wait. There’s more.

Her opening 50-yard free time of 22.73 seconds also shattered a 26-year-old Kansas pool record. Tammy Thomas held the previous best of 22.86 seconds set in 1983.

“We kind of beat two records in one relay, which was great,” Mayrovich said. “A lot of fun.”

Mayrovich said KU coach Clark Campbell challenged Mayrovich and her three free-relay teammates — Iuliia Kuzhil, Danielle Herrmann and Amanda Maez — to break the mark after the Jayhawks broke the KU pool record in the 200 medley relay the night before.

“That’s exciting,” Campbell told the swimmers Friday night. “Let’s try to beat another record.”

So, they did exactly that, as Kansas completed the two-day dual meet in fine fashion. Now, Campbell must make time to post the achievement on KU’s shiny new record board.

“We like to put new records up there,” Campbell said. “It’s a nice record board, so we’re hopefully going to rewrite a lot more records.”

Kansas so thoroughly dominated Iowa State that Campbell opted to count the Jayhawks’ relays only as exhibitions. That way, Iowa State could catch up in points while Kansas went after record times.

The Jayhawks entered the final day of the meet with a nearly insurmountable 106-44 points lead and piled the scoring on from there.

Perhaps the only surprise on the day was the performance of KU freshman Shannon Garlie in the 400 free. She overtook two swimmers for first place in 3:58.76, 21/2 seconds better than second place.

Kansas diver Erin Mertz earned some redemption, claiming first place with a season-best 295.04 score in the one-meter diving a day after finishing second in the three-meter diving. That second-place performance proved to be the only event in which a Jayhawk did not finish with a top score or time on either Friday or Saturday.

Campbell attributed the dropoff to his divers’ unusual Friday training regimen, which included lifting weights just before the event.

“It just throws them off a little bit,” Campbell said. “But today was more like KU diving, so it was a good way to finish the meet for our divers.”

As for Mayrovich and the rest of her relay teammates, there’s more good news concerning the speed suits as Kansas starts training for the four-day Big 12 Championships, which begin on February 25 in Columbia, Mo.

“We’re going to get new ones for conference,” Mayrovich said.

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