Lake Superior State's Swim teams traveled to Marquette, MI to face Northern Michigan, Saginaw Valley State and Grand Valley State in a dual meet format on Saturday. Zita Gonda continued her impressive first year at LSSU, finishing fifth in the Women's 50 Free and sixth in the 200 Back, while posting excellent legs in a pair of relays.

Head Coach Tim O'Neill said, "It's great to finally swim against more teams from our conference all at once, and only our conference. We got a good temperature check on where we're all at within our seasons and what our teams are developing towards."

Eszter Veszelovszki drew praise from the Lakers Head Coach, racing hard in the 100 Yard and 200 Yard Breaststroke events. Men's swimmer Laurel Roberts-Burrell also put on another quality performance, leading the 200 Medley Relay at the end of the first leg and posting excellent times in the 400 Free Relay. The first year British swimmer continues to catch the eye with fantastic performances across a range of events.

"You like to see swimmers racing hard and trying to get their hand on the wall," O'Neill said. "It's less about times and results and more about pride. We showed a lot of pride today."

Saturday marked the first time the Lakers competed since their excellent showing at Davenport's October Invitational two weeks prior. Saturday's meet was another stop along the way for a young team, continuing to grow, improve and adapt to the Division II level.

"As a group, we're doing well," said O'Neill. "I see our potential nationally in a few individual opportunities. From a group standpoint, we're coming together to show we can compete at the conference level. This tough competition and training phase we're in is only going to yield better results at the end of the year."

O'Neill praised his captains, Dimitrij Mijailovic and Ivy Delo. "This week in particular, the captains have shown a lot of leadership at practice. They're pushing their teammates, hyping their teammates up. At meets, when they're down from a training cycle physically, they're mentally and emotionally very engaged and supportive of their teammates and encouraging our very large first year class to push through and prosper."

He also pointed out that the meet at NMU was just an early waypoint on the long journey of a season, much closer to the beginning than the end of the campaign. "You've got to remind yourself that everyone's putting in work. Competition needs to be confronted with as much heart and passion as you can muster up. The circumstances are what they are. Handle them accordingly."

Lake State returns to competition in two weeks at Wayne State. Follow the team on the new Lake Superior State Lakers app, now available on the App Store and Google Play.