College Swimming: Falcons use depth to beat Cardinals

Dugger Faulkner rose out of the water and pumped his fist.

Heading into the final heat of the 50-yard freestyle, Faulkner wasn't expected to win because three Incarnate Word swimmers had better seed times than the UTPB sophomore.

But Faulkner out-touched all three, and the Odessa High graduate's surprise performance helped the UTPB men's team score 873 points and win the UTPB Invitational over second-place Incarnate Word at the Falcon Cube on Saturday.

"I was surprised," Faulkner said. "I was so out of breath I couldn't yell."

None of the UTPB men had trouble yelling when the team score was announced at the end of the Falcons' first meet of the season.

Most had thought the team had finished second to Incarnate Word.

"The men's team surprised me," UTPB coach Rob Rankin said. "We had good depth, and we had a lot of guys that moved up some spots from what we expected."

UTPB can thank its depth for the victory.

Incarnate Word won 11 races, while UTPB won three events. freshman Joseph Sarradet won both the 100 and 200-yard backstroke for the Falcons.

UTPB was able to put more swimmers into individual events than Incarnate Word in the four-team meet, and those extra swimmers helped accumulate enough points to offset the Cardinals' first-place finishes.

Sarradet's breakout performance led a group of UTPB freshmen who will play a significant role for the Falcons this season.

"We're ready to work together and step up," Sarradet said of the freshman class. "We really want to build this team into something better."

And the team knows it needs to keep improving if it wants to win a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference title over Incarnate Word.
UTPB's depth likely does not figure to be so effective in a larger meet.

"They are the team to beat," Rankin said of Incarnate Word. "They won a whole lot more races than we did, and it's given our guys a chance to see what they need to be working on."