The Eastern swimming program has two more meets left on the season before the men’s and women’s teams head to the Summit League Championships on Feb. 19-22 in Indianapolis.

Both teams are coming off losses at Ball State on Saturday. However, the Eastern men and women had several close races, coming up short against the Cardinals.

In the men’s 400-yard medley relay, the team of Brogan O’Doherty, Josh Miller, Conner Conroy and Colin McGill finished second, losing by 1.32 seconds with a time of 3:37.63 for Eastern.

Another example of coming up just short was Eastern sophomore Kaylee Morris in the women’s 50-yard freestyle. Morris finished third, but fell short of second place by only two hundredths of a second. Morris was not far off of first place either, losing by 1.01 seconds.

Eastern freshman Harris Thompson continued to shine as he came away with two more victories to add to his already impressive season. He holds four top times for the men’s team and also has the fifth-best Summit League time in the 1000-yard freestyle and the fourth-best conference time in the 1650-yard freestyle.

McGill has had a solid season in the pool, currently holding two top times for the Panthers this year as well as the fourth-best 100-yard backstroke time in the Summit League. This time was set at the AT&T Winter National Championships (50.50 seconds).

For the women, senior Katie Paige holds the third-best time in the 100-yard freestyle in the Summit League with a time of 56.90 seconds. She also has three team-best times so far this season.

According to collegeswimming.com, Denver currently holds the number one ranking in the Summit League while South Dakota State sits at second for the men.

IUPUI currently holds third place and South Dakota has the fourth place spot.

The fifth place spot in the Summit League belongs to Western Illinois.

For the women, the top conference spot belongs to South Dakota State and the number two spot is held by IUPUI.

Nebraska-Omaha holds the third place spot and South Dakota has the four spot.

And Western Illinois is currently placed fifth in the Summit League.

Not listed in the current standings for the Summit League on collegeswimming.com is Eastern. This might be due to the fact that the statistics from last week’s Ball State meet have not been entered into the website yet.

Eastern will take on conference rival Western Illinois at 6 p.m. on Friday at Padovan Pool.

Dan Hildebrandt can be reached at 581-2812 or djhildebrandt@eiu.edu.