As the women’s team congregated in a Knoxville, Tenn., hotel room the night before the D-III Swimming and Diving Championships began, Alyssa Swanson ‘13 couldn’t help but think about the past six months she’d spent with her teammates.
She remembered one Saturday-morning practice when the team was struggling. Head Coach Gregg Parini had asked them to go into the locker room, pull themselves together, and come back ready to focus. She remembered the morning when the power had gone out during a storm. With the exception of three safety lights, the pool was black, but the team still swam–even when the rest of campus was shut down for an “ice day.”
“Looking around at the women in that room and realizing how far we had come together as a team was empowering,” Swanson says. “It was in that moment that I realized how strong all 18 women were. I knew that these were the women I wanted in my foxhole–the women that I wanted at my side walking onto that pool deck in Knoxville.”
In NCAA swimming and diving, 18 is a special number. It is the most competitors a team can bring to nationals, and for the first time in team history, Denison had qualified 18 women. At the meet, Denison garnered 30 All-American swims, four varsity records, one national record, and 428 points, landing the Big Red their sixth runner-up trophy. Denison finished 186 points behind national champ Emory.