Westmont Women’s Swim dove into the new year by hosting a dual meet with The Master’s at the Tom and Meg Names Aquatic Center on a picture-perfect day. It came down to the last race with the Mustangs edging out the Warriors 97-89.

“We had a pretty good meet following a really hard week of training,” said Westmont’s head coach Jill Lin. “I was proud of the Warriors for really racing. It helped that TMU was such a great matchup for us.”

The meet started with the 200 yard medley relay in which the quartet of Kate Spraul, Abby Rickard, Emma Bustamante and Daisy Marquardt beat The Master’s by just over half a second. The Warriors posted a time of 1:58.31.

In the 200-yard freestyle, Willow Pezone and Katlyn McCurtain posted times of 2:03.70 and 2:06.19 to finish first and second respectively.

“Katlyn had an amazing finish to snag first place in the 100-yard backstroke,” noted Lin after McCurtain out-touched the Mustang’s Trudy Patterson by 0.31 seconds to claim the victory.

In the 200-yard breaststroke, Abby Rickard (1:12.86) just missed claiming first place, finishing 0.27 seconds behind TMU’s Johanna Busk.

However, the Warriors had a strong showing in the event with Meliana Calica (1:16.19) and Kelly Neill (1:17.62) finishing third and fourth.

Headed into the final event – the 400-yard freestyle relay – Westmont held an 85-84 lead.

“We really needed to win that relay or go two-three,” explained Lin. “Unfortunately with the Master’s splitting their relays they were able to secure first and third places and overtook us in the end. Olivia Garrison had a monster anchor leg in the ‘A’ relay with a 55.7 split that secured our second-place finish in that race.

“Trusty Olivia has always been someone I can count on when the team needs her to have a great race. She has been such a solid leader and swimmer all four of her years. I’m so grateful for ‘Big O’.”

Garrison passed The Master’s Mallory Engel in the final leg of the event to move the Warriors into second place.

“Overall it was a good meet for us, despite losing in the end,” assessed Lin. “I was proud to see them race so hard and start incorporating some details we’ve been working on in practice.

“Only a few more weeks left so I’m hoping this is a good motivator to get them to the finish line.”

 The Warriors’ next event will be the Orange County Invitational on Saturday, January 11. The meet will be hosted by Concordia at the William Woollett, Jr. Aquatics Center in Irvine.