The men’s and women’s swim and dive teams faced victory and defeat against the Eastern Michigan Eagles on Saturday, Nov. 12 at the Oakland Aquatic Center.

The men’s team won against the EMU Eagles 160-140, while the women’s team lost 193-107. Collectively, Oakland took first place in 13 out of the 32 events.

“Any time you go up against a team with the quality of an Eastern Michigan team and coached by Peter Linn, you know you’re going to be in for a real good effort on their part,” said Pete Hovland, Oakland swim and dive head coach. “That’s to be totally expected, and that’s what we got.”

The men’s team win against EMU is their first victory in the series since 2012-13.

Freshman Micah DeJonge gained nine points for Oakland when he won the men’s 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:36.66. He also held a strong lead in the men’s 1000-yard free and won an additional nine points with a time of 9:30.87.

“I feel really about [the win],” DeJonge said. “I’ve never experienced a meet like this where everyone gets super pumped to swim. Listening to all the upperclassmen talk about how exciting this meet is and how everyone gets up for it was really cool. Coming into [the meet] and having races in every event and watching everybody put in everything they have into every race it was a really cool experience.”

Sophomore Devon Nowicki earned Oakland a total of 38 points when he placed first in three individual events and the 200 medley relay, along with seniors Jeremiah Morren, Aleksander Danielewski and Tuomas Kiviluoma.

For the women’s team, sophomore Holly Morren took first place in three events. She won the the 50 free with a time of 23.40 seconds and the 100 free with a time of 51.27 seconds.

Morren was also anchor of the winning 400 medley relay, which also included freshman Katie Colwell and juniors Alysse Fischer and Arynn de Leeuw. Morren brought the team back from behind in the last stretch of the race and earned the Golden Grizzlies 29 points during the meet.

“I think knowing that we were a pretty good amount of points behind, we weren’t going to be able to win the meet,” Morren said. “I think winning the last relay has always been something that we really like to do, which is to kind of get the bragging rights for the last relay.”

Fischer earned four more points for Oakland when she placed second in the women’s 200-yard free with a time of 1:53.43.

Sophomore Krissy Harmon got second place in the women’s 1000-yard free with a time of 10:15.32, earning four additional points.

Hovland would have liked to see better results from the women’s team.

“I thought we swam well in majority of the situations,” Hovland said. “The women have a ways to go, and a little disappointed with the results there, but not for lack of effort.”

Men’s and women’s swim and dive will compete in the AT&T Winter Nationals at the McAuley Aquatic Center in Atlanta, Georgia, from Nov. 30 through Dec. 3.