Western Wayne Today

The Wayne State University women's swimming and diving team, ranked 13th nationally, traveled to Marquette for its first dual meet of the 2025-26 season against No. 10 Northern Michigan University. The competition took place over two days, beginning with a skins meet on Friday that did not include team scoring, followed by a traditional dual meet on Saturday.

Wayne State head coach Sean Peters commented on the experience: "The trip to NMU was definitely a great learning experience for our Warriors. For the women, we are definitely a young team with strong potential. We definitely ran into a strong Wildcat team, as the score indicated, and our young squad definitely got to see how they fare against them, and while I see improvement, we still need to take that next step."

During Friday's skins meet format, athletes competed in successive knockout rounds starting with a 100 IM and moving through randomly selected 50-yard events including freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly. Notable performances included the 200 free relay team of Kate Rhodes, Josey Coon, Kelsey Milz, and Elly Belmore finishing third with a time of 1:40.51. Scarlet Maison placed third in the 50 backstroke skins event.

On Saturday, Wayne State fell to Northern Michigan by a score of 239-61. Top-three finishes included:

- Third place in the 400 medley relay (Elly Belmore, Emma Crispo, Josey Coon, Kate Rhodes)

- Lilian Ljuckanov taking third in both the 1000 free (10:52.25) and 500 free (5:23.19)

- Kate Rhodes placing third in the 50 free (25.34)

- Josey Coon earning second in the 100 free (54.99)

- Elly Belmore finishing second in the 200 back (2:10.73) and third in the 400 IM (4:42.29)

- Emma Crispo taking third in the 200 breast (2:30.03)

- The quartet of Josey Coon, Kate Rhodes, Lily Lindower, and Emily Hedley securing third place in the 400 free relay (3:41.78)

Wayne State will continue its season at Oakland University's Golden Grizzly Invite from December 3rd to December 6th at the OU Aquatic Center in Rochester. Other teams scheduled to participate include Dartmouth College and Grand Canyon University.