Eighteen members of the Green Terror swim team raced in the Atlantic Ocean Sept. 23 to rev up for the fall season. Their results were impressive.

Among 115 entrants in the one-mile race, Molly Bolek ’07 was the third female finisher with a time of 21:32. Stephen Gomez ’10 came in fourth in his age group and ninth overall with a time of 21:11, while Mark Yankovich ’07 finished 12th overall, with a time of 21:52.

“The biggest difference between open water and pool swimming is having to deal with currents,” said Gomez. “At one point the current was running perpendicular to the direction that we had to swim, so every three strokes I had to swim back toward the pack I was pursuing.”

“The waves were pushing into your side,” Yankovich added. “So if you breathed one way, you’d get a mouthful of water.”

The 12th-annual September Splash, held in Wildwood, N.J., was Yankovich’s third ocean swim, and the hardest, he says. But Green Terror swimmers are used to working hard – a typical practice includes an 80-lap warm-up followed by a set of 120 laps.

“The team has never done anything like this together before and the experience was very positive,” said Bolek. “It gave people who are graduating this May, like myself, a way to keep swimming and competition in our lives forever.”

The first meet for men and women swimmers is 1 p.m. on Oct. 28 at home against Susquehanna College.