IRVINE, Calif. – The Cougar swimming and diving team got back into the pool to prepare for the stretch run of their season by competing in the Orange County Triple Distance Invitational Saturday in Irvine.

At this event, swimmers competed in their respective strokes at three different distances.  Freestyle swimmers had the option of either sprint (50, 100, 200 yards) or endurance (200, 500, 1000 yards).  Swimmers in other stroke disciplines swam at the same sprint distances, while medley swimmers competed at 100, 200, and 400 yards.

The Cougars found themselves plastered all over the leaderboards in individual events.  Ashley Cochran, for example, won the 200 butterfly in the first event of the day with a time of 2:12.74.  She had three other Cougars join her in the top five of that event.  Mikaela Maemura (2:09.36) presided over a similar result in the 200 backstroke, as did Montana White in the 1000 freestyle (10:27.62), allowing the Cougars to rack up a large team lead over the first six events of the day.  Maemura would sweep the backstroke competition, coming in first in the 50- and 100-yard distances as well, while Marci Yanagawa finished second behind Maemura in both the 100 and 200 and third in the 50.  

Not to be outdone, Sydnee Wilson had an outstanding day in the freestyle sprints, winning the 50- and 100-yard events, while finishing third behind White in the 200.  Allison Ferrer and Madison Schneider got in on the action as the only competitors in the diving events.  Ferrer put up an impressive 412.75 points in the 1m springboard contest.    On a point basis, Azusa Pacific finished first overall among the four programs competing, finishing with 288 points to second-place Concordia's 244.

The Cougars have one more meet scheduled before the conference championships.  They are currently slated to make the trip across town to Malibu on January 25th for a dual meet against Pepperdine.  The meet is set to kick off at 10:00 a.m.