Men's: Student-coach Fesenko takes 3rd place, Olympian Phelps dominates

The IU swimming team sent four swimmers to compete in the U.S. Open Invitational at the Boilermaker Aquatic Center in West Lafayette this weekend.\nThree Hoosiers earned final swims in the 1,500-meter freestyle competition. Senior Ryan McNeill finished 24th overall with a time of 16:13.83. Junior John Kevin Koehler finished in 26th place (6:15.83) and sophomore Steffan Troxel placed 38th with a time of 16:37.06. Koehler also raced in the preliminaries of the 400-meter individual medley, finishing in 37th place with a time of 4:44.11.\nSwimmers from all over the world, including a number of U.S. Olympians, came to swim at the U.S. Open. The competition took place over three days, with preliminaries in the morning and finals at night for each event. \n"Our distance swimmers are pretty talented and very deep," IU swimming coach Ray Looze said. "Swimming in the U.S. Open against some of the best international competition will help us a lot for the Big Ten and NCAA competitions in March."\nJunior Pat Penoyar also competed in the preliminaries for the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke competitions. Penoyar turned in solid times, finishing 34th in the 100-meter event with a time of 1:07.28 and touching in at 2:29.02 in the 200-meter to finish 34th overall. \nU.S. Olympian and six-time gold medal winner Michael Phelps headlined the competition. Phelps turned in winning performances in four events and won the men's individual high point award. \nDespite competition from only a few swimmers, Looze viewed the event as a success.\n"With our heavy training and finals coming up, we selected athletes who were comfortable with their class schedule and had the ability to represent our team well," Looze said. "Overall, it was a good meet, and we accomplished what we wanted to. Our focus now is on finishing up in the classroom."\nFormer IU All-American and current student-coach Sergiy Fesenko finished third in the 1,500-meter freestyle. He was the top seed in the 1,500 free and turned in a time of 15:29.12 to finish third.