The UW-Eau Claire men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams took to the water at UW-Whitewater UW-Whitewater Saturday. Both the men and women’s teams fell to the Warhawks, the men losing  134-109 and the women 155-88.

Despite the team’s loss, individual swimmers turned in signature performances. Sophomore Lisa Reed shaved time off her thousand  for the women and senior Nick Badilla took first place in both the one-meter and three-meter dives for the men.

Swimming and diving Coach Art Brandt said the team was exhausted going into the meet. He said it had to do with the time of year and the fact the team had been practicing a lot recently.

“We had a really good week of practice, a really hard week at practice and the swimmers and the divers were equally tired,” Brandt said. “ I think Whitewater came a little more prepared than we might have.”

He said being tired is no excuse, but the length of the bus ride and practice schedule definitely had an impact on the team.

As for Badilla, he went into the meet with a positive attitude. He said his mentality was to just have fun. He said he felt accomplished over his first place in both the one-meter and three-meter dives.

“I felt pretty good about it, I wanted to do that, I wanted to make sure I could do that … I really wanted to pull out first place in hopes that we would defeat them,” Badilla said.

For conference, Badilla said he plans on cleaning up the technique on some of his dives, which will help greatly in future events.

For the women’s swim team, Reed took to the pool excited and nervous to compete against Eau Claire rival Whitewater. Even though they lost to the Warhawks, she said the team swam well despite being fatigued.

“It was a really hard part of the season, we just came back from winter training, practicing four hours a day,” Reed said. “We hadn’t really started tapper yet, kind of run down emotionally and physically.”

Reed said one of her accomplishments this past meet was dropping a lot of time off her thousand, which she said is far more important to her than the place she gets.

Both teams will now look ahead to the Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championship, which will take place Feb. 14-16 in Brown Deer.