Michigan assistant women’s swimming coach Rick Bishop believes that the most dangerous kind of team is one that has nothing to lose, which was exactly his team’s mindset as it entered the University Aquatics Center in Minneapolis to face defending Big Ten champion Minnesota (1-0 Big Ten, 2-0 overall) on Friday.
While the task of competing against the defending champions in only the Wolverines’ second meet of the season may have seemed daunting, Bishop said that it actually motivated them. In the end, though, it wasn’t enough for Michigan (1-1, 1-1) as the meet ended 173–127 in the Golden Gophers’ favor.
“The assumption is that we’re going to go in and lose,” Bishop said. “So the pressure is on them to make sure that happens. We had nothing but positive upside here.”
Bishop also said that one of the goals for this meet was to shake up Minnesota and get the team rattled, which Michigan did right off the bat by winning the first event, the 200-medley relay, with the team of freshman Julia Fiks Salem, sophomores Ali DeLoof and Zoe Mattingly and senior Angela Chokran.
Minnesota went on to win the next two events, but its streak ended when DeLoof won the 100-yard backstroke.
Despite the fierce competition, Bishop said the Wolverines were able to stay motivated throughout the entire meet by envisioning themselves as the underdogs.
“In athletics, the underdog always has a great advantage because no one is expecting the underdog to really do anything,” Bishop said.
One of the bigger surprises of the night was when senior Courtney Beidler – who won the 200-yard butterfly earlier in the meet – was put into the 500-yard freestyle, an event she usually doesn’t swim. Bishop said that Beidler is the type of swimmer who tells the coaches to put her where she is needed.
“Overall, she’s probably one of the more versatile swimmers in the country,” Bishop said.
Beidler finished second in the 500-yard freestyle behind Minnesota’s Kiera Janzen, who is the defending Big Ten champion in that event.
However, Bishop said they were able to scare the Gophers.
“We came within 20 points twice during the competition,” he said. “We made them go over and check the score a couple times, which is nice. It was a good fight.
“We knew there were points where we could rattle them, and we could swim with them and we could be right there.”
Bishop views the next meet at Indiana as another step toward improvement.
“We look at it not as the next meet, but as a season progression,” Bishop said. “We want to focus on our details, and we want to try and be better at every step of the way.”