The men’s and women’s swim teams of Shippensburg University celebrated the careers of several of their senior athletes Friday at a dual meet against Clarion University.

For the men, the lone senior was Quinton Beck, who placed third in the 100-yard breaststroke and second in the 200-yard medley. He was one of the top performers for the men on the day.

Coach Tim Verge had good things to say about Beck’s leadership on the team this season: “Quinton’s done a great job this year being the lone male senior and keeping the guys focused.”

Jeff Beyer was on fire for the Raiders and took first place in two individual events and was part of the team which took first in the 200-yard free relay. His times for the 1,000-yard freestyle (10:07.01) and for the 500-yard freestyle (4:45.18) were both good enough to qualify for the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) standard.

Beyer’s times were just two of the 11 PSAC-qualifying times. Joe Deemer also had two PSAC times, taking first in the 100-yard butterfly (53.23) and second in the 200-yard freestyle (1:48.30). 

Hunter Keck contributed to the tally as well, taking first place (22.27) and second place (48.58) in the 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard freestyle, respectively.

Eric Zimmerman, Emmett Langan, Shane Kaliszewski, Nick Bloom and Adam Fox all got PSAC-qualifying results in their respective events. The results were not quite enough, however, as the Raiders fell to Clarion by a tight score of 105–100.

The women performed well, but could not get the win, dropping the contest by a score of 124–81. Several women had great individual performances on the day.

Seniors MacKenna Angert, Erin Fife, Nollaig Noll, Rhyan Rodriguez, Sarah Strause and Jeanette Welch were all honored before the event started.

Verge was very thankful for and proud of the work the seniors had put in over the years. 

“They’ve done a lot for us and the number of points scored through the conference meet over the years has really been pretty high. They’ve had some ups and downs in that group, and they’ve really hung well together.”

Fife and Welch together took three PSAC-qualifying finishes of the nine total earned by the women’s team. Fife placed second in the 50-yard freestyle (25.67) and first in the 100-yard butterfly (1:00.50) and Welch earned a third-place finish with a time of 55.41 in the 100-yard freestyle.

Stephanie O’Toole continued her dominant career with three first-place PSAC-qualifying finishes. She competed in the 200-yard individual medley (2:09.05), the 100-yard freestyle (53.93) and the 100-yard breaststroke (1:05.68).

Gracee Tothero also earned two PSAC times, finishing behind O’Toole in the 200-yard IM in second (2:17.73) and two spots behind O’Toole in the breaststroke (1:11.89), contributing to the impressive day overall by both squads.

Coach Verge was sad to see the seniors leave, but he was glad he got to coach them over their time at SU. 

“I’m gonna miss them. You get attached to people and they’ve done a really good job for us and represented us very well. The goal is to have a great conference meet and hopefully we send them out on a great note there.”

The next event on the schedule for both teams is the Patriot Invitational at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Talking about the event, Verge said, “We’ve always swam very well at that meet, the team loves it and we’ve had some of our best performances ever there. I really know they are going to be excited.” 

The meet starts Nov. 16 and runs through the 18th.

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