Freshman Make Grand Entrance on First Day of Competition

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – For the start of a season, pretty impressive.

For the start of a career, rather amazing.

Colorado State's women's swim and dive team walked away from the first day of competition at the Intermountain Shootout at Colorado Mesa University with a lead in all seven dual which will be contested over the weekend, and the pace was set by the newest members of the team.

The Rams won two events during the day – both coming from true freshmen – and another member of their class, diver Lindsay Gizzi, placed second on the 3-meter board with a score of 291.30, good enough to hit the qualifying mark for NCAA Zones.

That's a pretty good job of recruiting during a pandemic.

"That's Lisa," head coach Christopher Woodard said, pointing to assistant coach Lisa Ginder. "Lisa sets the table. I think it's really encouraging. Sometimes it can be a little hard for a freshman, coming to a new training situation, not only that, it's adopting to everything – a new environment, what's expected out of you in the first meet. So to come out in the very first race and win them, or place in the top five, that's really encouraging. They're bought in and hopefully they keep growing from there."

Colorado State leads all seven duals they'll compete this year, with the scores tight against both BYU and Northern Colorado. Saturday produces 11 more events on the slate, with competition beginning at 10 a.m.

The Rams' freshmen, they didn't waste any time acclimating themselves to collegiate swimming. For both Maisy Barbosa and Katie McClelland won individual titles in their very first swims for the Rams. Barbosa beat the field in the 400-yard individual medley in 4:30.17, while classmate Maya White placed fourth (4:36.21). A race later, McClelland built up a lead and held off Lily Borgenheimer of Mesa, 1:05.05-1:05.09.

Grand introductions, to say the least. They made it look easy, but they insist none of it was. But McClelland did set a goal to win her first race.

Lindsay Gizzi

"I wanted to, yes," she said. "I went behind the blocks and I saw the girl's time, and I was like, 'I can do that; that's doable.' I was out for blood, and it was so much fun. It was a good race.

"It felt like a good race, but my last 12 and a half yards, I have a tendency to just start spinning, so in my goal meeting, Woody and I talked about that, and we're going to start working every day after practice on me not spinning, even when my tempo gets high and I get tired. But the whole race felt so good accept for the last 12 and a half."

The freshman class is one who didn't get to take official visits, so coming to campus was meeting the team for the first time. It was meeting the coaches in person for the first time. But they were talking to each other, and that's never stopped.

The group of six is pretty tight, and they form three sets of roommates. And when they talked, it wasn't just about coming to Fort Collins and fitting it, it was to make an impact.

"I feel like we honestly just did a really good job right off the bat of getting to know each other, so that's definitely helped us come into these meets and hype ourselves up," Barbosa said. "I think we all have high expectations for each other, and I feel we all understand that, so we're all pushing each other to be our best. I feel that's really what's helping us perform well.

"That was our goal. We were going to be part of this team, we are going to hype up the swim team because we knew maybe swimming wasn't the biggest sport here, but we're going to change that. We're going to make it big, we're going to do great and we're going to hype up the team this season."

Emily Chorpening had a top-eight finish in the 1,000 freestyle, an event where White placed second. Erin Dawson had the rough start of the group, her goggles coming off immediately in the 400 IM, but she gutted out the race and then came back and dropped a split as a late add on a relay team.

While they were all in the lanes, the divers were competing on the 3-meter board, and Gizzi had no idea what she needed to do in order to do what she was going to do.

She was calm throughout the six-dive set, and happy as well. She treated it like a practice so she could stay focused on what she had to do, but she had no idea what score she needed to reach Zones. It was teammate Braeden Shaffer who broke the news to her.

But she knew she was doing well when she drilled a dive like she never has before.

"I actually hit my back two-and-a-half, which, I was really surprised," Gizzi said. "In practice I was hitting them, but it wasn't like a hit. It was like, 'oh, you made it.' But I actually kicked, saw the water, ripped it. I've never done that."

The Rams opened and closed the day with solid performances in relays, with the 200 free team taking second the first race, the 200 medley team third to finish the day. In between, some familiar faces were doing familiar things.

A slew of top-eight finishes came from team as Anika Johnson and Megan Hager did so in the 200 free; Kate Meunier in the 100 breast; Friedrichs, Johnson and Hager in the 50 free; Liza Lunina, Barbosa and Elsa Litteken in the 100 back; Friedrichs, McClelland and Barbosa in the 50 butterfly; Abbey Owenby and Madison Hunter in the 1,000 free; and Jozie Meitz in diving.

Naturally, Woodard's mind went directly to finishing strong on the second day, but as good as the first went, even he had to adjust the way he normally views a meet.

He was impressed because his freshman didn't overthink a thing and went out and performed. He was just going to follow their lead.

"I tend to hedge my bets a little bit, but I'm looking less at the missed opportunities and more at the ones we took advantage of," he said. "There were fantastic performances from Lindsay on the boards, Kristina in her sprints, our medley relay looked pretty good, as did our 200 free relay. I don't know that we've been under 3:36 at this point in the season. There were a plethora of individuals who swam really well."

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