St. Thomas first-year swimmer Alex Foti broke a school record for the 1,000 yard freestyle in St. Thomas swimming’s home opener against Division II Augustana University (0-2) Saturday at the Anderson Athletic and Recreation Complex Pool.
Foti, who made his college swimming debut today, broke the record from 2019 by .03 seconds with a time of 9:48.56.
“It was crazy,” Foti said. “I feel like the team environment, looking over to the side and seeing all purple, like a whole wall of purple is just something crazy.”
Coach Scott Blanchard, who kicked off his 11th season with the team, is looking forward to Foti’s future with the Tommies (1-0).
“(It was) unexpected,” Blanchard said. “My question to him was, you know, ‘what are the next four years going to be like?’ I’m really excited about that for him, and for the program.”
This was the Tommies first meet as a Division I team. The men beat Augustana 170-110, and the women beat them 178-120.
Blanchard said that the team was looking forward to competing again.
“The kids were really excited to come together and race again. It’s been over a year for some of them,” said Blachard. “To actually compete, and be able to kick off Division I at St. Thomas, there was a tremendous amount of excitement.”
The meet wasn’t without its hiccups, however. During the men’s 200 individual medley, confusion with the starting buzzer led first year Michael Scripp of St. Thomas and first year Jackson Dircks of Augustana to miss their heat.
Fortunately, both swimmers were able to compete in the third heat of the event, finishing with a time of 2:02.61 for Scripp, and 2:02.51 for Dircks.
Augustana’s bus also broke down before the meet, delaying the start of the competition by 45 minutes. Augustana had their first meet against South Dakota State yesterday, losing 178-116.
This is the second meet for the Vikings’ men’s team overall, who are in their first year of competition. Augustana coach Lindsie Micko made the announcement that the team would be adding men last year.
Taylor Beagle, a senior on the Vikings, said that it’s been a lot of fun to have a bigger team.
“This is the first year that we’ve had a men’s team, and so they are a ton of fun to train with,” Beagle said. “And there’s a lot of talent in the freshman class that just came in, on the girls side as well.”
“It’s been super fun to be able to lead the team in this transition,” senior Anna Astrup said. “There’s been a lot of new experiences, but our team has been doing such a great job with the transition. We’ve been working super hard in practice, and so far, living up to our D-I title.”
Astrup placed third in the 200 individual medley with a time of 2:16.36.
The Tommies face off at Wisconsin-Green Bay at 2 p.m. on Oct. 23.
Owen Larson can be reached at lars6521@stthomas.edu.