The Eastern men’s and women’s swimming team went to Bowling Green, Ky. and competed in the Western Kentucky invitational Nov. 19.

The men’s team finished in second place. The women’s team finished seventh out of eight squads.

The Panthers had no individual winners, but the men did have two third-place finishers. Ken Tiltges, a sophomore, earned third place in the 200-meter individual medley and junior Matt O’Hagan placed third in the 100-meter breaststroke.

The men’s team finished with a final score of 616.5, more than tripling the final score of the women’s team. The women’s team finished with 165 points.

The men’s and women’s sides of the meet were both won by Western Kentucky. The Hilltoppers finished with scores of 1,347 points for the men and 1,161 for the women.

The Panthers’ lack a diving team, which WKU has, so WKU was able to tack on extra points.

The Panthers have now completed half of their non-conference championship meet schedule.

With six meets down, the Panthers have six to go before the Summit League championship meet in February, held in Indianapolis.

The men’s team may have done well, but Eastern head coach Matt Bos said these mid-season meets are less about scores and more about improving the swimmers’ personal times.

“We have these meets throughout the year, and they’re kind of just benchmarks to see where we’re at,” Bos said. “Our whole year really comes down to one meet, and that’s our conference championships in February.”

The Panthers’ next meet is Jan. 4, a little over a month from now. Bos said that this scheduling is done throughout the season to allow the swimmers to fit in large blocks of training without being focused on frequent meets that would take away from practice time.

“We’ve kind of scheduled meets this year around our training blocks,” Bos said. “The meet schedule will really allow for good, solid weeks of training.”

On Jan. 4 the Panthers will swim at Auburn University, in Auburn, Ala. After that, they will have four meets in two weeks.

Following these meets, the Panthers only have two meets – Jan. 28 and Feb. 5 – before the Summit League championships.

Following the Feb. 5 meet in Padovan Pool, the Panthers will have a two-week block of training time before the season concludes.

Brad Kupiec can be reached at 581-7944 or bmkupiec@eiu.edu.