The Grand Valley State University men’s and women’s swim teams came home victorious from Calvin College’s annual winter invitationals Saturday as both teams finished with a score of more than double that of the second place teams.

“We’ve been working hard and putting our time in,” said GVSU head coach Andy Boyce from poolside directly after the finals meet. “If you do that, good things will come.”

The teams spent Thursday, Friday and Saturday of last week bussing between Allendale and Calvin College’s aquatic center in Grand Rapids for both morning and evening meets against eight other schools.

The final meets ended around 9 p.m. Saturday with the men’s team scoring 1,297 (with Calvin following at 601 points) and the women’s team scoring 1,397 (trailed by Kalamazoo College in second with 661).

“It’s a challenging meet,” said GVSU assistant coach Roger Karn. “We wanted (our swimmers) to get that experience and swim strong when they were tired and they did. We had a lot of good, strong swimmers down through the lineups.”

The weekend saw a total of six GVSU swimming records broken. Freshman Caitlyn Madsen proved to the world she could backstroke faster than anyone at GVSU – including herself – when she broke the freshman record in the 200-yard backstroke on the first day before surpassing her previous time and replacing it with a new record of 2:05.19.

Boyce said he had originally recruited Madsen as a butterfly swimmer and she had simply been available to fill a gap in the backstroke lineup. It then became one of her strongest events.

“I was kind of shocked with my backstroke,” Madsen said. “This is really new, so I don’t know what’s fast for me yet.”

Another school record was broken in the 100-yard breaststroke by freshman swimmer Aaron Marken, who managed a time of 56.06 seconds – shaving almost four seconds off the previous school record.

Marken said he was surprised by the new record because he’s a relatively new swimmer having only swam senior year in high school prior to attending GVSU.

“It’s a shock,” he said. “But it’s good because I realize there’s things I have to work on but I’m posting good times. I’m really looking forward to seeing what I can do later on.”

Boyce said he has seen considerable improvements in Marken’s speed since he started swimming.

“For having limited experience in high school, he’s really starting to blossom,” Boyce said. “He’s very focused on his goals. For someone who’s just starting out, that’s impressive.”

The Calvin Invitational marked the last meet of the year for the GVSU swim teams. Their season will resume Jan. 3 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. against Nova Southeastern University.

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