The Grand Valley State University men’s swimming team wishes the entire GLIAC championships could have been like the 800-yard freestyle relay on day three at the 2011 conference meet.

Wayne State University and GVSU were neck-and-neck the entire race and GVSU junior swimmer Aaron Beebe, who swam the final leg on the relay team and touched the wall first, gave GVSU its second race win of the day.

However, this was one of the lone bright spots in a disappointing second-place finish at the conference championships for the Lakers, who finished with 728 points, 124 behind GLIAC champion Wayne State. GVSU went in with hopes of defending its title, but it was the Warriors who brought home the hardware and gave the Lakers a frustrating end to an otherwise successful regular season.

“We had a great conference meet,” said GVSU head coach Andy Boyce. “We started off a little bit sluggish but saw quite a bit faster times across the board from our team and from the entire conference. It is the best conference in Division II, and it gets better and better every year.”

On day one of the conference championships, the Lakers were led by the 4×200 medley relay team of Beebe, fellow junior Raphael Santos, and freshmen Erik Aakesson and Michael Griffith, who turned in a second-place finish with a time of 1:30.88, hitting the NCAA Division II A cut.

As the team looked to move into first place on day two, the swimmers on the 4×200 freestyle relay team did all they could to help out. Made up of Griffith and fellow freshman Ben Scheurich, sophomore Derek Mead, and senior Justin Pattermann, the team finished fourth with a time of 1:23.37 and earned 30 team points.

Day three was a day of firsts. Beebe won his first-ever GLIAC individual title in the 100-yard butterfly. It also marked the Lakers’ first individual crown of the championships. His time of 48.86 seconds earned Beebe a NCAA Division II B cut.

The final day and the final chance for a comeback by GVSU was highlighted by senior swimmer Jordan Schrotenboer’s first-ever GLIAC individual title. His time of 1:49.87 in the 200-yard backstroke earned him the victory. However, it was Wayne State who finished with 868 points, well ahead of the second-place Lakers.

“We were in some tough spots after the preliminaries,” Schrotenboer said. “We were in spots where we couldn’t move up and score additional points, but we could only move backwards. Some people finished ninth or tenth, so we ended up losing quite a bit of points that way.”

Even with the disappointment in preliminaries, however, Schrotenboer did see several solid performances.

“Aaron Beebe won both butterfly events and swam very fast in doing so,” Schrotenboer said. “He was also a key part in many of our relays. We had a very solid 800 (yard) free relay and won the race by a couple one-hundredths of a second. No one ever threw in the towel and everyone kept confident in themselves the entire time. Wayne State, though, did swim very well. They did exactly what they had to do for most everything.”

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