| OCR Text |
Show Ure swimmers win n'nth championship DV nn f I -4 HSi . : -. ; r V'i J U 4 . . . 4, I fli;!- , , ;, - , ! .... ; . - t 1 .-'-'. --- .... fiY BILL THURMAN Chronicle Staff If you think the Western Athene Ath-ene Conference (WAC) basketball race was close, consider the WAC swrnming championship. Saturday Satur-day 'mghtat Provo theU.es gar- ' "shed first p,ace jn f defeatmg New Mexico and Colorado Colo-rado State by five points. The Utes nailed down their ninth consecutive con-secutive WAC crown for a continuation contin-uation of the record of mastery under head coach Don Reddish Most of the local news media folks picked the Utes to be a poor third or fourth behind Nex Mexico, Mex-ico, CSU and BYU. However you might remember that 1 picked the Utes by a nose just about a week ago. Nobody seems to regard our swimming program very highly. The Utes have been gunning for tins victory all year and their tcrfiy, and apparently even one else on the team. i Coach Reddish commented tins victory was our only goal. We really didn't mention anything about the NCAA finals to be held at Iowa State to the boys. We'll sit down with the boys at practice now and decide who wants to go. It is up to the individual if he warm to go." The Utes have qualified a number of swimmers but according to Reddish. "They were pretty well peaked for the WAC." Emotionally and physically, physi-cally, the Utes defeated some' of the greatest swimmers in the WAC. If many of them go on I'm sure it will be difficult to attain the peak shape they were in for this test." Whatever the case, the Utes won the trophy with a team effort and sort of counterbalanced counter-balanced the loss to BYU in basketball. v., ' ''aiming ace, Steve Elsnab, finishes his s! Art in the 200-yard backstroke during h-em Athletic Conference Championships in j" Provo last weekend. Elsnab competed in the fourth lane and can be seem touching the pooiside -Photo Courtesy of Brigham Young DaiJy Universe training was good enough to pull it off in the end. After the first day of the three-day three-day meet, the Utes trailed CSU and BYU. The second day saw the Utes move into second, 13 points behind leader CSU.Coach Reddish commented that for the Utes to win they would have to be ahead by ten points at the close of the second day. The one thing the coach failed to see was the great depth his team had. An average event saw at least three Utes place. For example in the 100-yard 100-yard freestyle Rob Kittel took fourth, Craig Burns fifth and Bif Rummerfield ninth. The only events the Utes did not score in were the one and three-meter diving-First place points for Utah were picked up by Steve Elsnap in the 100 and 200-yard backstroke. His performance should make him a person to be reckoned with in the NCAA finals. Most of the Utes showed great versatility such as Spence Mortenson placing in the 100 and 200-yard backstroke and again in the 400-yard I individual Medley. Rob Kittel contributed valuable points by finishing fourth in both the 100 and 200-yard freestyle and second by .3 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle. Utah also got top performances from Elsnab in the 500-yard freestyle, Tome Eiche, Norris Uddy and Gary Conrad Con-rad in the 100 and 200-yard but- |
