The Lake Forest College swimming and diving teams began the season with a home meet against Carthage College Friday night. The Forester women were defeated 136-79 and the men fell 134.5-97.5. Sophomore Toni Corbani and senior Kristofer Korth gave the home team a sweep of the distance events.
Corbani turned in the Foresters' first win of the night when she completed the 800m-freestyle in 9:52.31, nearly 10 seconds ahead of the runner-up from Carthage. Korth then prevailed by more than 15 seconds in the same event on the men's side, finishing in 9:04.39.
The next Lake Forest swimmer to win an event was sophomore David Bunting in the 200m-freestyle. His time of 2:01.23 was just .57 seconds ahead of the top finisher among the Red Men.
Forester sophomore Simona Kurta touched the wall first by nearly 10 seconds in the 200m-IM with a time of 2:31.62.
The swimmers took a break for the diving competition and Lake Forest freshman Heath Ogawa swept the men's events with 261.50 points in the 1-meter competition and a score of 268.90 off the 3-meter board. Both of those marks rank him third in program history.
Lake Forest swimmers won eight of the final 10 individual events, beginning with junior Orion Huey in the 100m-butterfly with a time of 1:00.46.
Kurta and Bunting swept the 100m-freestyle with Kurta finishing in 1:02.61 and Bunting edging out Carthage's top finisher by one-hundredth of a second with a time of 55.29 seconds.
Forester junior Emily Bowens took the 100m-backstroke by four-and-a-half seconds, completing the race in 1:08.51.
Corbani and Korth turned in their second sweep of the night, taking the 400m-freestyle in 4:49.27 and 4:22.33, respectively. While Corbani won by nearly four seconds, Korth needed to erase a half-second deficit with 50 meters left and pulled out the victory by just two-hundredths of a second.
Sophomore Jessica Cline became the eighth Forester to win an event when she touched the wall first in the 100-breaststroke with a time of 1:21.52. It was another close race on the men's side and Lake Forest junior Sam Freedberg ended up tied for first with a time of 1:09.87.
The Red Men and Lady Reds began the meet by sweeping the 200m-medley relay and closed out the contest by doing the same in the 200m-freestyle relay.
The Foresters will be back in action on Saturday at Lewis University. The meet, which will also include Truman State University, will begin at 1:00 p.m. Lewis and Truman State are NCAA Division II members.
