A Darling Of A Season Opener

MOORHEAD, Minn. (11/04/22)---There were plenty of fast times, high scores and close races as Concordia opened its 2022-23 season by hosting Minn.-Morris. The Cobbers recorded four event wins, but it wasn't enough as they fell 139-78 to the Cougars.

A pair of sophomores made the biggest splash for Concordia on opening night. Hailey Jaeger, who broke the school records in the 50-yard and 100-yard freestyle last season, won those two events in the first meet of the year. Diver Kiernan Darling made a huge leap in the first meet of her second season. She won the 1-meter event, and her 11-dive score was more than 40 points better than the total she posted at the MIAC Championship Meet last spring.

Jaeger won both the sprint freestyle events going away. She clocked a 26.18 in the 50-yard freestyle to give CC its first event win of the meet in the fourth race of the night. Jaeger then touched the wall in 58.16 in the 100-yard freestyle and won the event by 1. 38 seconds.

Darling, who recorded Top 16 finishes in both the 1-meter and 3-meter competitions at last year's MIAC Meet, had a total of 208.65 in the six required dives. She came back to post a score of 154.20 in the optional portion of the event, which gave her a total of 362.85. That score smashed her score of 317.40 in the 1-meter event at the conference meet.

Not to be outdone by the sophomores, senior Kaitlin Cramer recorded the other event win for CC on Friday. She swam a 2:27.91 in the 200-yard backstroke and won the event by 4. 36 seconds. Her finishing time is 1.0 seconds faster than her time at the opening meet of last season.

Cramer was also second in the 1000-yard freestyle with a time of 12:25.63.

Cramer also teamed up with Jaeger, Jess Bray and Camille Gunderson to swim in the closest relay race of the meet. The quartet swam a 1:49.64 in the 200-yard freestyle relay and was touched out by Morris by a scant .50 of a second.

Bray and Gunderson were also locked in the tightest individual events. Bray out-touched a swimmer from Morris by .07 second to get third place in the 100-yard butterfly, while Gunderson beat a pair of Cougar athletes by less than .70 of a second to get third in the 100-yard freestyle.

Brienna Timm and Chantelle Schmidt both had third-place finishes with times that were better than last year's opener. Timm was third in the 200-yard freestyle with a mark of 2:18.03. That was faster than her time in last year's first meet when she placed eighth in the same event.

Schmidt had the biggest turnaround from last year of any Cobber. She was third in the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 3:03.48. That mark is 13-seconds faster than her season opener in that event last season.    
                
UP NEXT: Concordia will have another chance to continue to beat their marks from last season when they host Hamline in their second home meet of the weekend. The Cobbers and Pipers will take to the pool on Saturday, Nov. 5 at 12 p.m.