Dec. 3, 2015
ROCHESTER,Mich. - The Oakland men's and women's swimming and diving teams will compete at the Zippy Invitational in Akron, Ohio Friday, Dec. 4 through Sunday, Dec. 6. The meet will begin each day with a morning preliminary session, followed by an evening finals session. Each finals session will contain the top 24 swims from the morning in each event.
FALL SUCCESS: The fall has been kind to Oakland as both the men's and women's swimming and diving teams earned victories over Green Bay, Wayne State, UIC and Wright State, while the women's team also defeated Duquesne. Individually, four Golden Grizzlies earned weekly honors including Stirling Fordham and Joe Smith who earned Horizon League Male Divers of the Week on Oct. 20 and Nov. 17 respectively. Patricia Aschan earned Horizon League Female Swimmer of the Week on Nov. 17, and Nikki Flynn was named CollegeSwimming.com's Conference Swimmer of the Week on Nov. 10.
NEW ADDITIONS: Oakland announced on Nov. 30 the addition of nine student-athletes during the fall signing period. The men's squad will add distance freestyler Micah DeJonge to the 2016-17 class, and the women's team will have eight newcomers for next season, those being swimmers Kirstyn Abbasse, Katherine Colwell, Rileigh Eding, Sara Heines, Amanda Hudson, Grace Shinske, and divers Angelique Wise and Sarah Stine.
DEFENDING THEIR TITLE: The Golden Grizzlies begin their title defense returning a number of key contributors including Horizon League Female Swimmer of the Year Patricia Aschan, last year's conference champion in the 200 and 400-yard IM and 200 butterfly. The women also return reigning conference champions Nikki Flynn (100 and 200 freestyle) and Takara Martin (100 and 200 breaststroke).
The men return Horizon League champions John Schihl (100 and 200 breast), Mitch Alters (200 fly), Tuomas Kiviluoma (100 free) and Jeremiah Morren (50 free). Stirling Fordham returns for his sophomore season after placing third on the 1-meter board and sixth on the 3-meter board last year at the Horizon League Championships.
HOVALND'S RESUME: Pete Hovland returns for his 37th year as Oakland's head coach accumulating 37 consecutive conference championships, four NCAA Division II National Championships and 54 individual national champions on the men's team and 21 straight conference titles for the women. Hovland has been named a conference coach of the year 23 times, including the Horizon League Men's and Women's Swimming Coach of the Year in 2015.
#WEARtheBEAR
