Photo courtesy of Nevada Athletics. Senior Donna dePolo competes in a swim competition. Nevada won the silver medal in the 2021 Mountain West Conference championship.

Nevada’s swim and dive team lost the gold medal by one-tenth of a second to UNLV in the Mountain West Conference championship. The Wolf Pack won the silver medal overall and claimed more than 30 individual and team awards.

Swim’s competition was held in Las Vegas from Feb. 17-20, while the dive team traveled to Colorado Springs from Feb. 18-20.

In the first swim event for the Pack, Josien Wijkhuijs, Donna dePolo, Julia Adamczyk and Colette Berkenfield finished third in the 200-yard medley relay race with 1:39.22 as their final time. Later, the 800-yard freestyle relay team of Mariana Vignoli, Caitlyn McHugh, Julia Adamczyk and Emma Brady finished in fourth place with a time of 7:19.86. The two events gave the Pack 106 points to end the day tied at third with the Wyoming Cowboys. 

Day two was a big day for Nevada. Adamczyk won the gold in the 200 individual medley with a time of 2:00.39 followed by Benedict Nagy winning the bronze with 2:00.75, dePolo taking fifth, and Gianni Pitto coming in eighth. In the 400 medley relay, Nevada beat out San Diego State by two seconds to take the lead. 

In Colorado, the dive team had three top-eight finishers in their first day of competition. Diver Jessie Nowotny claimed the bronze in the 1-meter springboard event with a score of 276.30, followed by Isabel Vazquez in fourth with 275.25 and Linnea Sorensen in seventh.

Nevada added 393 points on the second day for a total of 499 to surge into first place. UNLV trailed the Pack in second place by ten points and San Diego State stood in third place.

On the final day of the championship, Caitlyn McHugh won the silver medal in the 1,650m freestyle with a time of 16:53.02. dePolo took the gold in the 200m breaststroke and Adamczyk won her second gold of the tournament in the 200m butterfly. Despite this, UNLV took second, third and fifth in the event which was enough to take a one-point advantage over the Pack in the final event. 

On the diving side, Vazquez finished fourth with a score of 228.10, with Sorensen (226.35) in fifth, and Nowotny (215.50) in eighth. Nevada’s final score for the meet was 1,349. This was the team’s third straight year winning second place.

After their second-place finish, the team earned 31 individual and four relay team awards. Nevada won 19 total medals (six gold, five silver, eight bronze) over the course of the tournament. 

Madeleine Chinery can be reached at mchinery@sagebrush.unr.edu or on Twitter @mchinery6