The women's swimming team triumphed over Old Dominion on Saturday in its season opener, while the men's team was defeated in the enemy waters.
The Blue Devils defeated Old Dominion by a 17-point margin, 128-111, and the men fell to the Monarchs by 36 points, 126-90.
Much of the success of both Duke teams can be attributed to their powerhouse freshmen classes. Freshman Leslie King dominated the 500 freestyle, and freshman diver Catherine Robinette won the 100-meter diving competition.
On the men's side, freshman Marc Rotblat was the sole male Blue Devil swimmer to come away with a victory--winning the 200 breaststroke when he pulled away from the field in the final 50 yards. Freshman Chris Wise swam an impressive 500 freestyle in 4:49--the fastest time for a Duke swimmer in the event in the past five years.
"I am really pleased," head coach Bob Thompson said. "We're off to a pretty good start. We're going to keep getting better and better."
Thayer Thompson, senior co-captain of the men's team, noted that the teams swam 40,000 yards last week. He felt it may have hindered the men's team's performance.
"We are coming off of some tough practices over fall break," Thompson said. "We're doing a lot of training, and we plan to step up that intensity. Old Dominion swam really well. They finished their races better."
The Monarchs are in their second year of granting scholarships to swimmers. They have begun the process of building a powerful program with those new scholarships.
Duke, on the other hand, does not offer scholarships to swimmers. The Blue Devils often find themselves overmatched versus schools that do.
Regardless, senior co-captain Tony Alvarez felt that there wasn't one thing Duke could make an excuse for.
"We just got beat," Alvarez said.
The women only won two individual events at the meet. Yet they still captured the victory.
"We took a lot of second, third and fourth places," senior co-captain Heather Reger said. "We have a lot of depth."
Reger took home one of the Blue Devils' two victories. She finished first in the 200 breaststroke and teammates Kristin Gardner, Heather Winter and Alex Mooney followed suit taking second, third and fourth respectively.
Last year, the women's team finished with an even record at 6-6, while the men were 6-5. The teams will compete again at N.C. State on November 3.
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