Swimming exceeds expectations

In a season filled with broken records and elevated standards, the Panthers’ men’s swimming… In a season filled with broken records and elevated standards, the Panthers’ men’s swimming team attained another school high this weekend when diver Michael Wells qualified for the NCAA Championships with a strong finish at the Diving Zone Prequels in Annapolis, Md.

With the addition of Wells to an already strong contingent of Panther swimmers, head coach Chuck Knoles will be taking a team-record eight swimmers and divers with him to the NCAA Championships, which run from March 28-30 in Athens, Ga.

Knoles was delighted to see the senior diver join the seven Panthers already slated to swim in the end-of-season exhibition of the nation’s best swimmers and divers.

“Having a diver there at the meet will give us performers in the pool and on the [diving] boards,” said Knoles, who last month was awarded Big East Coach of the Year honors. “When he needs to step it up to perform, he usually does.”

The Diving Zone Prequels were the last chance to make the NCAA cuts, and Wells proved Knoles’ point by placing second in the men’s 3-meter board event.

Wells joins a stable of swimmers that most observers, including Knoles, consider to be a part of the best team to ever break the waters at Trees Pool.

Over the course of the season, the Panthers toppled numerous records while rolling to an undefeated conference record (7-1 overall, 5-0 Big East), capped by a Big East Championship victory that has never before been so easily dominated. The 319-point cushion was the largest first and second place differential in the history of the Big East Championship.

The end result is a season of accomplishment, especially when considering the lofty expectations that this team steeped in a tradition of success so unequivocally exceeded.

The eight swimmers that make up Knoles’ squad are a testament to this.

“Each year [Pitt Athletics Director] Steve Pederson asks us to create goals for ourselves, our teams and our programs,” Knoles said. “I put down that we would like to take four people to the NCAA’s. We got eight