EIU swim head coach Scott Teeters preaches that a good environment and culture can make any team great. However, that did not happen at its first meet of the season. 

Eastern lost to Valparaiso 157.5-104.5 with its men’s team and 168-97 on the women’s side on Friday night at Padovan pool. 

Teeters said the slow start was due to it being the first meet of the year and that some swimmers needed to get back into shape from the summer. 

“The kids that have a Division I mindset, it went well,” Teeters said.  “We’re a Division I team. You know, and there is no room for people just to be seasonal athletes.” 

Teeters said that a way to correct that is by recruiting and just trying to change the culture. 

Both teams also have a lot of transfers and have trained differently as Graduate Assistant Conner Colston pointed out. 

“We got a lot of people coming from a lot of different places who train differently, and we just got to whip them into shape. This is how NCAA Division 1 colleges work,” Colston said. 

Junior transfer Remingtyn Bokos swam in four races and said that she needs to get in more shape as the season progresses. 

“I felt pretty good. I mean, that thousand was a little rough, but it was something there,” Bokos said. 

Bokos was one of the few Eastern swimmers early in the meet to cheer on her fellow panthers even if a lot of swimmers did not. 

Teeters said that having the team cheer for their fellow swimmers is what he wants from the program. 

“We need to do better and make it feel more like a team sport and that’s the struggle, but We’re going to break through,” Teeters said. “Where we need to break through is we need to make it a team sport.” 

Eastern started out with two losses right away in the men’s and women’s 400-yard medley relay. EIU would not recover from that. 

“Losing those two relays set the tone,” Teeters said. 

Valparaiso arrived at the pool late, and the meet had to be pushed back an hour. But, Valparaiso still came out fast. 

“We had bus issues coming here, so we got here a little bit late,” Valparaiso head coach Maggie Kroemer said. “But they still had good attitudes, still came ready to race, and it was awesome to see.” 

It was not all bad for Eastern as junior Nolan Wallace won two events and he was .3 seconds off of the pool record Teeters said. 

Teeters also noted that Wallace biked all summer and kept his cardio up so that he could come back faster than ever for the first meet of the multi month season. 

Senior Genevieve Biberdorf won all three of her events that were not relays as well. 

It was not enough however, as Eastern did not win a single long-distance event or relay at the meet.  

Kroemer said that Valparaiso came into this meet with high spirits and it helped them get out to a fast and dominant start. 

“They came very motivated, they were very excited, had good attitudes going into the meet and they swam really well, we looked really sharp today,” Kroemer said. 

Teeters said that it is only their first meet and that the team is training to be ready for later meets in the schedule. 

Both teams have its next meet on Friday against its own alumni. 

 Patrick Schmitz can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].