Jessica Palacio
The Paw Print
The ASU grizzlies kicked off the season with the second annual Green and Black Pentathlon Sunday, Sept. 30 in Plachy Hall.
Program and Pool records fell as the competition progressed. Individual winners of the pentathlon were sophomore, Nick Mankus for the men and freshman, Allison Bischoff for the women both from the Green Squad.with an impressive 42-second lead the Black Squad ended up with the team victory over the Green Squad.
How does a swimming pentathlon work you ask? Well in the case of this year’s event it was what is considered a sprint pentathlon; each athlete competes in five individual events as well as one of the two relays. In a sprint pentathlon the five individual events are as follow; 100 yard Butterfly, 100 yard Backstroke, 100 yard Breaststroke, 100 yard Freestyle and a 200 yard individual medley (50 yards of each stroke).
From here each individual’s time is added to the team’s total time, and the team with the fastest overall time wins. It is the same for the individual titles, the person with the fastest add up time wins, not necessarily the one who wins the most events. Particularly for the team scores it does not come down to who wins the most events, but who has the most swimmers in the top 4-5.
Both the men’s and women’s squads are split into equal teams based on times and compete in a variety of non-swimming related events for time deductions for the main event in the week leading up to the pentathlon. Going into the meet the teams were tied with three victories apiece with the Green Squad having won the scavenger hunt, kickball and skit, while the black squad held the victories in ultimate frisbee, Mafia wars and the spirit award.
The energy going into Sunday’s main event was fierce.
The opening event was the women’s 200 yard medley relay where the Green Squad’s team of Jessica Palacio, April Cunningham, Jordan Shomaker and Bischoff touched out the Black Squad by 0.16 seconds.
On the men’s side the first record of the day was shattered by the Black Squad’s all freshman relay of Clay Meschke, Jared Aragon, Alan Jackman and Stuart Zwiacher. The men crushed the former school record by more than one and a half seconds.
The next record to fall was the pool record for the men’s 100 yard butterfly. Minks came out with a time of 53.39 to take the record away from Mesa State’s Kent Stavrakas that was set in October of 2010.
The final record of the day to fall was set by Meschke in the 100 yard backstroke with a time of 58.28.
While the team scores were fairly close for the majority of the meet, the Black Squad was able to solidify their victory in the final individual event, the 200 IM. In the IMs the Black Squad added a 29 second lead that was found to be insurmountable by the Green Squad.
The Grizzlies kick off their regular season on Oct. 1 as the women take on Western State. The men will begin their season the next day at Mesa State.
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