ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — New coaching staff, new faces in the program, and a new season unfolds. The new-look UNM swimming and diving program heads to Fort Collins to take on a pair of Mountain West programs in a double-dual meet with the homestanding Colorado State Rams and the Air Force Falcons.
The two-day meet will start at 3 pm on Friday and 11 am on Saturday, with most of the events taking place at Edora Pool Ice Center (Friday’s 3-meter diving event will take place at CSU’s Moby Pool). There will be 11 events each day of the two-day meet.
The meet is the season opener for New Mexico, while Colorado State lost to Wyoming last week, a loss that ended a wild 23-match dual winning streak. Air Force went 1-3 in the Intermountain Shootout in Grand Junction. The double dual was made possible with the new venue of Edora Pool Ice Center (EPIC), which will allow up to nine lanes in some events.
UNM should have its full complement of swimmers and divers available, with only Marin Wilson on the swim side and Zoe Rinon on the diving side not competing. It’s the first meet for UNM’s new coaching staff, and head coach Naya Higashijima and assistant swim coach Phoebe Campbell will need to rely on their veterans that will have to lead a squad small on numbers but not on raw talent.
Key veterans that were teams leaders last year include senior Maddie Deucher (top time in the 200 back in 2022-23), junior Katy McCarter (top times in the 50, 100 and 200 Free) and sophomore Maya Clise (top times in the 500, 1000 and 1650 Free). However, UNM’s lone returning All-Mountain West performer in Ola Tomaszek will be looking to continue her brilliant career that saw her take out the UNM record in the 200-yard breaststroke at the Mountain West Championships, swimming a 2:15.06 in prelims to break the previous record of 2:15.44, set by Emily McGill in 2017.
She nearly had another record in that meet, missing the 100-yard breaststroke record by just 0.31 seconds, coming in at 1:01.61.
While no one should be expecting school records in meet one, what UNM should expect is healthy competition within the team, as Higashijima and company added six newcomers to the swim team, including transfers Alex McGill (Back), Tahlia Micallef (Free/IM), Iryna Tsesiul (Back) and Kaylah Yazzie (Back). It should make for a deeper squad that at times last year had just nine swimmers in meets competing near the end of the season.
On the diving side, new diving coach Logan Andrews will have just three active divers this weekend, and he will lean on veteran Kristen Hepfer, who has been through the Mountain West and knows the diving tanks and cities. She will help guide along Abigail Bouravnev and freshman Alice English as UNM will look for diving to score some key points in meets throughout the season. For Hepfer, she got better as the year went on, including a couple of finals appearances at the NAU Diving Invitational late in the 2022-23 season.
Lobo fans of swimming and diving can keep up with results and the team all year long on social media, following on Twitter at @UNMLoboSwimDive and on Instagram @UNMLoboSwimDive, where the team will have an instagram takeover all weekend long in Fort Collins.