Swimming and diving excels at Princeton Invitational

Four members of Pitt’s swimming and diving teams put up NCAA provisional times at the Big Al… Four members of Pitt’s swimming and diving teams put up NCAA provisional times at the Big Al Princeton Invitational this weekend. It was the first meet of the season when NCAA times were recorded for the Panthers.

In addition, nearly every member of both teams recorded a personal best performance as the men’s team came in fourth out of nine, and the women’s teams came in fourth out of 12 teams with scores of 547 and 481, respectively.

“They were outstanding,” Pitt coach Chuck Knoles said. “Our goal was to go to a meet where we’d get a good level of competition, and we did. We worked really, really hard this semester. We had a short rest, but I think we got really positive results.”

Penn State won for both the men and women.

The weekend-long event, held at Princeton’s DeNunzio Pool, provided a lot of competition for the Panthers and was highlighted by several stellar performances on both sides.

Junior diver Alex Volovetski took first in the 1-meter and third in the 3-meter diving events to start the meet. His score of 332 points earned him the pool record in the 1M event.

Senior Warren Barnes posted the first NCAA provisional time of the season for the men by knocking a second off his 100-yard breaststroke time and winning the event by nearly two seconds. Barnes later won his second event, taking the 200 breaststroke. He nearly made the NCAA provisional time in that event as well, missing the mark by only .11 seconds.

“We saw a ton of personal bests,” said Knoles, who is hoping that Pitt can host an invitational here next year. “That’s what we were looking to see.”

Three women later made the cut for NCAA-B times.

Katie Cutrell was one of them, making her first NCAA provisional time as a freshman. She swam the 1650 free in a time of 16:51.62, touching the wall in fifth place and knocking nearly eight seconds off of her seed time.

Later in the meet, junior Stacie Safritt did the same, making the NCAA provisional mark in the 100-free for the second year in a row. She came in third in the event with a time of 50.61.

Senior Brittany Stevens also made the cut, coming in second in the 100 butterfly with a time of 55.20. Stevens later earned an eighth-place finish in the 200 butterfly.