In her final meet as a member of the St. Catherine University swimming and diving team, senior Steffanie Jurusik (Starkville, Miss.) was nearly perfect and ended her career as a Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC) champion and record holder. For her spectacular weekend, Jurusik has been named the Wildcat Athlete of the Week for the second time this year.
Jurusik opened up the MIAC Championships for the Wildcats with one of the most notable performances of the three-day meet when she broke the conference and meet record to capture first-place in the 200 IM Thursday evening. Her time of 2:06.92 was just two-hundredths of a second faster than the record previously set in 2008 and was the first time a Wildcat had achieved such a feat in 21 years. With that swim, Jurusik earned her second MIAC Champion title and All-MIAC honors.
On Friday, the senior turned around and captured another All-MIAC honor when she placed third in the 400 IM with a time of 4:37.89 in the finals. Though she was unable to hold on to her MIAC title from a year ago, she dropped 11 seconds from her previous season-best heading into the meet for her seventh All-MIAC honor as a Wildcat.
Jurusik and teammates Alli Witt (La Crescent, Minn.), Kathleen VanDeVoorde (Rochester, Minn.) and Haley French Krahn (Rochester, Minn.) closed out the Friday night session in a big way, breaking the St. Catherine 800 Freestyle Relay record with a time of 17:59.95. The quad finished sixth in the event and broke the previous school-best time by just five-hundredths of a second.
On the final day of competition, Jurusik broke her previous 200 Butterfly school record – set at the Grinnell meet in January – during the prelim session with a time of 2:11.30. She then went on to place fifth in the finals with a time of 2:12.28.
Jurusik finishes her career with five individual school records and is now a member of five record-setting relay teams at St. Catherine.
