Adam Plutecki breaks record in 200-yard breast

While Pitt’s women’s swim team coasted to its third conference win on the season, the men… While Pitt’s women’s swim team coasted to its third conference win on the season, the men failed to rally for victory at a home meet Saturday against West Virginia.

But sophomore Adam Plutecki did not let his team’s shortcomings stand in the way of shattering the team record and an eight-year-old pool record in the men’s 200-yard breastroke.

“I didn’t know where I was at all for this meet,” Plutecki said after his astounding swim of 1 minute, 58.98 seconds, more than two tenths of a second faster than current Olympic medalist and world record holder Brendan Hansen’s time from 1998.

Saturday marked the first meet that Plutecki was able to swim for points for the men’s team, after spending the fall semester ineligible for NCAA competition because of his recent move from Poland.

A member of the Polish National Team, Plutecki had always swum his races in 50-meter pools, and this was his first college meet in a short-course, or 25-yard, pool. His 200-breast time from Saturday puts him well into Big East Championship eligibility, as well as satisfying a preliminary standard for the NCAA Championships in March.

In addition to winning the 200 breast by a margin of three and a half seconds, Plutecki placed second in the men’s 200-yard individual medley to Pablo Marmolejo of WVU.

Pitt’s ‘A’ 400-medley relay team of senior Jeff Leath, junior Warren Barnes, freshman Geoff Morgan, and Plutecki also fell to West Virginia’s stroke swimmers, who posted a time of 3:20.97.

Leath delivered outstanding swims in both his 100- and 200-meter backstroke races, trampling the field by more than two seconds in both events with times of 49.81 and 1:49.76, respectively.

Barnes won his 100 breastroke race with a time of 9:28.32, out-touching WVU swimmers Kevin Donohue and Nick Delic.

Junior Chris George offered the Pitt men another first place race, swimming a 9:28.32 in the 1000-yard freestyle.

Double first and second place finishes in both 1- and 3-meter diving events by junior Jeremy Stultz and sophomore Aleksandr Volovetski marked the men’s dominance in diving. Stultz’s 396.67 top score in the 3-meter and Volovetski’s winning 380.03 in the 1-meter place the pair of divers well into contention for an NCAA berth.

Sophomore diver Eric Becker also held on for points, with a fourth-place showing in the 3-meter and a fifth off the 1-meter board.

But even with the help of the diving team, Pitt’s male swimmers could not muster the numbers to slay the Mountaineers.

Going into the final 400-meter freestyle relay down only five points, the Panther men saw the chance to take their third conference win this season, if only they could outreach WVU’s freestyle team.

Pitt sophomores Patrick Mansfield and Andy Kyrejko pulled ahead for the first half of the race, with a lead of only two-tenths of a second bringing the packed crowd to its feet. With Mountaineer freestylers flanking Pitt’s center lane, freshmen Geoff Morgan and Alex Kubicek failed to hold on for a win with their 3:06.90 time.

As the final string of men dove in to decide the meet, WVU’s ‘B’ relay anchor Delic smoked the competition by more than two seconds, pulling off an impressive 3:04 win, while his teammates on the ‘A’ relay stole second place from the Panthers by .78 seconds.

While Pitt’s men fell in a close meet with a final score of 159-141, the women had no trouble in sinking their opponents.

Senior Kristin Brown led the Panther women to a 169-131 victory over WVU with her three individual victories in the 200, 100 and 500 freestyle events. Her finishes place her well into NCAA Championship striking range as three solid B cut times.

Senior Andrea Shoust and junior Brittany Stevens both boasted additional wins in their events. Shoust put to shame the rest of the field in the 200-yard backstroke event, as she broke out a half second ahead of her competitors and held on for a two-second win.

Stevens’s 57.11 showing in the 100 butterfly trumped a close race from WVU’s second-place finisher Stephanie Shupe with a time of 57.58.

Shoust and McDonnell teamed up in the 100 back for a one-two result, silencing WVU freshman Morgan Callaway’s quick 56.95 with an even stronger 56.67 from Shoust and a 56.89 from McDonnell.

With the female Panther divers kicking off the meet with 1-meter dives worth 233.62 points for Pitt freshman Hanna Margo to win and 219.67 for Margo Ekstrom, also a freshman, to take second, the women bonded together in both the 400-medley relay and 400-free relay to cap their team triumph.

Shoust, Stevens and sophomores Ruth Seiffert and Stacie Safritt outstroked the opening Mountaineer 400-medley relay teams when they won with a time of 3:47.72.

Brown, McDonnell, Safritt, and sophomore Agnes Mago killed the competition in the 400-free relay by a cool five seconds, clenching the final women’s event of the meet with a 3:25.04.