It has been 11 days since the Panthers last swam in a meet.

The men and women’s swim team last raced Nov. 15 in a meet against Saint Louis, losing both sides of the meet, with the men losing 148-80, and the women losing 171-68.

Even though Saint Louis captured first in almost every event, the Panthers had good times from individuals and relays.

“The team record is just another stat,” said sophomore Emily Immel. “The stat doesn’t really mean anything, and we’re doing well. We’re swimming for times in the meets, we hope to improve but we’re doing really well as individuals.”

Individually in the meet, diver Joe Laird continued to have success, sweeping the diving events by winning the 1-meter and 3-meter dives with scores of 239.90 and 261.30.

“Joe is our only diver and it is very important for him to place because we need him in every meet,” said senior Tim O’Hagan. “There is nobody supporting him because it is just him diving. We didn’t have everyone there, there were two guys that were injured and two guys who had family emergencies, so we’re going to put that behind us and look forward to the next meet.”

The men’s relay teams also had success, securing a first place finish in the 200-yard freestyle relay by senior Matt Latham, O’Hagan, sophomore Matt Crittenden and junior Joe Ethington with a time of 1 minute, 28.12 seconds.

The team did not have much room for a break during Thanksgiving, as everyone had to continue to swim to keep in shape with the time off.

“We’ve got to get back; we had a week off,” O’Hagan said. “Not everyone swam as much as they should have, but we’re going to get back into shape and work on the skills and get back and ready for the (House of Champions) meet.”

On the women’s side, senior Patty Young continued her strong season, taking first in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:12.74.

Though the teams dropped to 2-4 and 0-6 overall on the year, they are shooting for their best times in events. The team knows that they’ve swam better than what their record has indicated.

“Our record doesn’t really reflect how well we’ve been swimming because we’ve been in a lot of really close meets,” O’Hagan said. “The cards didn’t fall our way this time. (The record) is motivating to us so we can show everything that we’ve got (in meets).”

Recently, freshman Matt Scaliatine won the Summit League Athlete of the Week award after leading Eastern to a first place finish at the Panther Invitational. He won both the 100-yard (1:01.88) and 200-yard (2:13.94) breaststroke and placed second in the 400-yard individual medley with a time of 4:25.15.

“Scaliatine has been huge for us, he’s stood out and has won some big events for us,” head coach Ray Padovan said. “We’re hoping he can continue to come up big for us since we’ve got him for four years.”