Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 12 No. 4 | March 2020

inside.hokiesports.com 41 Virginia Tech’s swimming and diving programs are in just the second year of Sergio Lopez Miro’s tenure, but the Hokies continue to make waves in the pool under their head coach and 1988 Olympic bronze medalist. Four swimmers and a diver collected hardware at the 2020 ACC Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships to lead the Hokies to a fourth-place finish in the team competition at the meet held at the Greensboro Aquatic Center in Greensboro, North Carolina on Feb. 26- 29. The Hokies finished with 898 points, while NC State won the men’s competition with 1,250 points. At the 2020 ACC Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships held the week prior, Tech came in eighth with 469 points. Virginia won the team race with 1,492.5 points. Blake Manoff, a sophomore from Haymarket, Virginia, paced all Hokies when he won a silver medal in the 200-yard butterfly and set a school record in the process with a time of 1 minute, 40.48 seconds. Manoff, who came in fourth in the 100 butterfly as well, was one of five medalists for the Hokies, with the other four winning bronze medals in their respective events. Tech nearly went 1-2 in the 200 butterfly, as Antani Ivanov came in third with a time of 1:41.01. Ivanov, a sophomore from Veliko Tanovo, Bulgaria who also came in seventh in the 500 freestyle, held the school record in the event (1:41.06) before Manoff’s record-breaking performance in the finals. Sam Tornqvist tied a school record when he finished third in the 200 backstroke with a time of 1:40.10. The junior from Stockholm, Sweden tied Collin Higgins’ time set in 2014. AJ Pouch, a freshman from Henderson, Nevada, went into the finals of the 200 breaststroke with the meet’s top preliminary time, and he improved on that in the finals, though he came in third with a time of 1:53.69. That time currently ranks as the second-fastest in school history in the event. Noah Zawadzki won a bronze medal in the 1-meter diving event, scoring 337.50 points—and he just missed a silver by six points. Zawadzki finished seventh in the preliminaries, and the top eight qualified for the finals. Other strong performances for Tech on the men’s side came from Thomas Hallock, who came in fifth in the 50 freestyle (19.49) and eighth in the 100 freestyle (43.14); Filip Dal Maso, who finished fifth in the 400 individual medley (3:45.75); Lane Stone, who was sixth in the 200 freestyle (1:34.61); Brennan Doss, who came in ninth in the 1,650 freestyle (15:04.87); Forest Webb, who was ninth in the 200 backstroke (1:42.18); and Keith Myburgh, who finished ninth in the 400 IM (3:46.05) and 10th in the 200 breaststroke (1:55.34). In the relays, the 800 freestyle relay team of Manoff, Lane Stone, Ivanov, and Dal Maso was fourth with a time of 6:16.36—the second- fastest time in school history in the event—and the 200 freestyle relay team of Manoff, Hallock, Henry Claesson and Ivanov also finished fourth, swimming the event in a time of 1:17.88. “We stayed the course, and we performed very well,” Lopez Miro said of his men’s team. “Notre Dame and Florida State really had a good meet. Last year, we didn’t expect to be fourth, and we got it by 1.5 points. This year, we got fourth by a lot more points. We’re not that far away from the top. I’m not saying that we’re near that level yet, but the spread of the points has really gone to every team. Every team now has some good swimmers. For us to have 76.5 more points than last year is really good with the way the points have been spread out among all the teams. Like I always say, the future is bright, and we’re going to keep taking baby steps.” On the women’s side, sophomore diver Teagan Moravek led the Hokies, coming in fifth in the 1-meter diving event a year after coming in 17th in the preliminaries at the meet and not qualifying for the finals. Also for the Hokies, Joelle Vereb finished in the top eight in two events—the 50-yard freestyle and the 100 butterfly. She swam the 50 freestyle in the finals in a time of 22.20 seconds and the 100 butterfly in the finals in a time of 52.47 seconds. Loulou Vos came in eighth in the 1,650 freestyle competition with a time of 16:25.99. Vos’ time is now the fifth-fastest in school history in the event. In the relays, the 400 freestyle relay team of Vereb, Abby Larson, Sarah Shackelford, and Kayla Purcell led the way, coming in sixth with a time of 3:17.34. The 200 medley relay team of Alexandra Slayton, Vereb, Purcell, and Anna Landon was eighth with a time of 1:38.34, and the 800 freestyle relay team of Vos, Shackelford, Brooke Travis, and Rose Pouch finished eighth with a time of 7:13.39. The 400 medley relay team of Emily Meilus, Vereb, Purcell, and Larson also was eighth with a time of 3:35.91. “I think overall we had a very good meet,” Lopez Miro said of the women’s team. “I think good in the sense that things can always be better. We got eighth place, and as a coaching staff, we thought that would be our place. It is the place we were last year. In that sense, people probably will think that we haven’t improved, but it’s like that movie ‘Moneyball’ that talks about numbers and understanding what you have … We don’t lose a whole lot of points off of this year’s team, and our class next year is a pretty good class. In that sense, it shows that the future is pretty bright for us. We just need to be patient … Overall, the coaches are pretty excited about what has happened.” win medals at ACC 5 Swimming and Diving Championships A 5 S The Virginia Tech men’s team came in fourth, while the women’s team finished eighth at the league’s meets by Jimmy Robertson Blake Manoff set a school record in winning a silver medal in the 200-yard butterfly at the ACC Championships in late February.