Swimming and Diving Return to MW Championships
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — After a year in which the entire New Mexico Lobo swimming and diving team could only watch the Mountain West Championships on their computer screens, now in 2022, they get to participate. After a year in which the team didn’t compete, UNM will basically close out its season in College Station at the MW Championships, which start Wednesday and run through Saturday.
UNM is one of nine Mountain West teams in the championships (joining San Diego State, San Jose State, UNLV, Nevada, Colorado State, Wyoming, Air Force and Fresno State, and the Lobos will be aiming to imrpove on its eighth-place finish in 2020, which occured a few weeks prior to the pandemic shutting things down. Last year’s champions were UNLV, winning by a scant nine points over Nevada in a meet with only eight programs (Utah State doesn’t sponsor and former two-time champion Boise State dropping the program along with baseball due to COVID-19 budget concerns).
The Lobos had their best finish ever in the league in 2019 when UNM finished fourth, riding a superb performance by Adriana Palomino, who won three events (200 free, 1,650 free and the 500 free). Those three wins are UNM’s lone swimming wins in the MW Championships, other than Anna Bertrand’s 2017 win in the 200-yard butterfly. Historically, UNM has had better success in diving, with six Lobos (Becca Barras, Ashlee Erickson, Tracey Bergihan, Megan Harper, Aubrey Bush and En-tien Huang) combining for 12 individual titles, but none since Harper on the 3-meter and Huang on the platform in 2014.
Now, while UNM is a longshot to take the conference title, the Lobos do have a few high seeds that could battle for an individual title. The best bet for UNM is Laura Benkova, who missed time during the year to compete in the European Championships. Benkova enters the championships with the No. 2 seed time in the 200-yard free (1:48.70), just four-hundreths of a second behind top-seeded Katelyn Blattner. She is also seeded fifth in the 500-yard free with a seed time of 4:51.11.
Fans can view all the action from the above links. There are a few events early each day, but the main races start at 6:30 p.m. Central Time, 5:30 Mountain.