NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The final month of the fall season begins for Vanderbilt swimming Saturday with the first of three meets in four weeks when the Commodores visit Missouri. The competition gets underway at 10 a.m. at the Mizzou Aquatic Center, with Vandy taking on both the host Tigers as well as McKendree.
It’s the first time the Dores will compete since they opened the campaign with a 160-101 victory at home over North Florida on Oct. 4.
The Commodores claimed seven individual victories against the Ospreys, with both Aubrey Hull (50 and 100 backstroke) and Elayne Chen (200 and 500 freestyle) winning two races. Merritt Zieminick finished first in the 1,000 freestyle, with two other newcomers—transfer Natalie Strongyli (400 individual medley) and freshman Lane Gooding (50 freestyle)—also contributing to the tally.
Quinlan Hinerfeld was runner-up in the 50 and 100 back, with Vandy also getting second-place finishes from Emily Constable (50 breaststroke), Melissa Cowen (100 breaststroke), Meredith DiPasquale (50 butterfly), Gooding (100 free), Kate Heintz (100 butterfly), Bailey Ratzburg (400 IM) and Zieminick (500 free) in the win.
“We took that time to get some really good training in, I feel like we’ve made some great strides in practice so it’s going to be good to see how that translates in a meet when we compete on Saturday,” head coach Jeremy Organ said. “We’re looking to compete at a level where we feel like we should be at this time of year, but we’re also looking at the next few weeks where we’ll face good competition. I want to see us go in there and prove to ourselves that what we’ve done over the last three weeks has prepared us to do really well this season.
“So let’s throw some swims down and see where we’re at.”
This will be the fourth meeting in the series with the Tigers, and first since Missouri traveled to Nashville in October 2018. The Commodores are making their first appearance in Columbia since the 2015-16 campaign. Vanderbilt has never faced McKendree in competition.
