In swimming, dominating performances can be hard to detect. The score can be misleading.

In Syracuse’s swimming and diving meet against West Virginia on Saturday, a quick glance at the Webster Pool scoreboard would not have told the whole story.

The scoreboard showed that Syracuse split their first meet since Dec. 1 with the Mountaineers. However, while the Orangemen lost, 132-93, by more than the Orangewomen won, 127-107, the men’s meet was much closer than the women’s.

Four times in 11 swimming events, the Orangewomen (4-2) swept the podium. The Mountaineers (4-2 men, 2-4 women) swept the Orangemen (2-4) only once.

‘(Our women) went one, two, three in four swimming events,’ said coach Lou Walker, who has been at SU for 25 years. ‘I can not ever remember coaching a Syracuse women’s team that did that.

‘That was a really dominant effort. And, West Virginia has good people, so to have them not break into those four events was dominant.’

Sophomore Elyse McDonough led the Orangewomen, capturing first in both the 200-yard individual medley and 200-yard butterfly. Ashley Clark, Megan Daney, Ashley Danowski and Annie Tudryn each scored one first-place finish. On the men’s side, Djordje Filipovic, Josh Scott and Spencer Raymond won events.

The result-split victories for the second year in a row-suited WVU coach Eric McIlquham just fine, he said.

‘We’re trying to elevate the bar for this program,’ McIlquham said. ‘We have got a ways to go in the conference, so this was a big hurdle for us with Syracuse because they are always tough.’

The meet was also tough on the Orange.

Not only did they have the Mountaineers to contend with, they had the knowledge that for five senior swimmers, Saturday was the last home meet ever. Filipovic, Zach Posey, Chris Miller and Glenn Bizewski are all graduating at the end of the season for the Orangemen. Stacy Wells is graduating for the Orangewomen.

For Wells, the final meet was almost surreal.

The fact that she finished the first leg of the 400-yard freestyle relay fighting for first place seemed much less important than the fact that when she gave way to freshman Sarah Reed and pulled herself out of the water, she had finished her Webster Pool career.

‘I don’t think it really hit me until the end of it,’ Wells said. ‘I was like, ‘Hey. This is never going to happen again.’ No more dancing on the deck, no more fighting with the boys team to see which music can go on first.’

It was a bittersweet finish for Wells, for whom Saturday was a second ‘final home meet’ as an Orangewoman. Last year, she was fighting through severe shoulder troubles that threatened to end her career one year too early.

Now, forced out by graduation, the only senior Orangewoman can’t help but think about her five classmates who have left the team since her freshman year.

‘It’s weird because we started out with five swimmers and one diver,’ Wells said. ‘For me to be the only one left is just amazing. It is weird. And, I mean, I just wish that I was here to share (the end) with everybody else that I came in with.’

Published on January 21, 2002 at 12:00 pm