News coming out of the swimming department this weekend was mixed. The NIU men’s team split the weekend by defeating Valparaiso Saturday but fell to Notre Dame in a close match Friday. On the women’s side, it was a pair of losses.

On Friday, Coach Mike Burt’s women’s team lost 166-128 to Notre Dame at Anderson Pool then proceeded to drop a meet to Iowa 137-105 on Saturday. The women’s dual meet record leveled out at 4-4.

“We really weren’t up to snuff with our perfomance Saturday. I hope it is just tiredness from the back-to-back meets,” Burt said. “We need to rebound from this weekend before heading to Illinois Friday for the Illini Classic.”

Senior Jenny Wendell provided the bulk of Huskie weekend scoring. Wendell won both the 100 and 200-yard freestyle races, the 200 breaststroke and swam the first leg on NIU’s winning 400 freestyle relay team against Notre Dame.

For Coach Dave Clark and his men’s team, the 151-148 loss came down to the last race with NIU (7-1) needing a one-two finish for the victory.

“The difference tonight was that they had one better swim than we did. Pick one, any event, change a position in our favor and the team score changes in our favor. Even two fifth-place finishes switched over to us gives us the win,” Clark explained. “There’s no use second guessing because we could’ve done better in places, but so could they. The bottom line is they got just enough points to win.”

Against Valparaiso, NIU posted one-two finishes in the opening 400-yard medley relay and both the 1,000 and 200-yard freestyles en route to a commanding lead that led to the Huskies swimming predominatly exhibition entries for the second half of the meet.