After swimmer Mike Lanz came off his final wall in the 200 yard butterfly race during the 2014 MIAC Championship swim and dive meet Saturday night, it looked like he wouldn’t catch No. 1 seed Billy Brebrick of St. Olaf.

“I told myself I can see him,” Lanz said “He’s close; I can just chase him and go after him.”

But with about 25 yards to swim and trailing St. Olaf by about a length and a half, Lanz kicked into a gear that 35-year coach Tom Hodgson said he had never seen in a final 50, hitting the wall .37 seconds before Brebrick and claiming his second first-place title of the meet.

“He’s the kind of guy that if there’s somebody out there, he can reel them in,” Hodgson said. “He can catch them.”

Lanz, who claimed “male swimmer of the meet” honors, and Mariann Kukielka, who had top finishes in both the 100 and 200 fly events, were just two examples of the St. Thomas men’s and women’s across-the-board strength as both teams swam to second place in the conference meet.

The men scored 740 points to put them behind powerhouse No. 10-ranked St. Olaf (848), while the women’s 697 points were 189 points shy of first-place and No. 11-ranked Gustavus (886.5). In his final year coaching the teams before he retires in May, Hodgson said second felt as good as first.

“I asked everybody at the beginning of the year to commit to swimming to the limit of their potential, and they have really done that,” he said.

Heading into the weekend meet, Lanz’s 100 fly time of 48.21 was faster than any recorded Division-III men’s time in the event while Kukielka’s 100 fly time mirrored that statistic on the women’s end. Both are expected to compete in the NCAA meet in Indianapolis in mid-March along with the 200 medley team of Kukielka, Hayley Trace, Emily Punyko and Courtney Grunewald plus an aggregate women’s 400 medley squad made up of four individual times.

Hodgson said other Tommie swimmers had NCAA A and B qualifying times, which could eventually qualify them for the national meet after their times are compared to other swimmers’ conference finishes across the country.

With Tommies finishing with national qualifying times, Hodgson estimated the St. Thomas men and women also combined for about 13 new school records.

“We’re swimming so well,” Hodgson said. “Not just the school record for the top kids, it’s all the great performances all the way down the line. Swim after swim after swim is a lifetime (personal record), and that’s just so satisfying.”

Thursday’s events handed the Tommie women two second-place finishes. The men claimed one first-, two second- and two third-place finishes.

Diver Nick Johnson, who was named “male diver of the meet,” won the 1-meter diving competition for the third year in a row, scoring 477.90, a number that qualified him for the NCAA meet in 2013. He repeated Saturday night to win the 3-meter competition.

Lanz secured a second place in the 200 individual medley relay (1:51.66), breaking his own school record and coming in four seconds behind St. Olaf swimmer Michael Gratz. He also contributed to the Tommies’ second-place 400 medley relay finish (3:23.86) alongside Justin Mullee, Ben Henrickson and Max Hamilton.

Hayley Trace, a senior, said she swam a lifetime personal best in the 50 free (24.06), shaving almost a half second off her previous 24.48 record and settling her into seventh place in the event.

“It was senior magic,” Trace said.

Heading into Friday’s events, both the St. Thomas men and women sat in second place behind St. Olaf and Gustavus, respectively.

Trace stood out again Friday night with teammates Punyko, Kukielka and Grunewald in the 200 medley relay as the quad finished second by more than one second (1:44.57), dropping 3.41 seconds off its entry time.

The St. Thomas men’s 200 medley relay mirrored the women’s success as Mullee, Hamilton, Henrickson and Evan Eklund completed a 1:34.22 swim for second place in the event.

Kukielka claimed first place in the 100 fly for the third year in a row Friday with a time of 55.25, more than a second faster than Gustavus’ Division-I transfer Dani Klunk (56.91). Freshman teammate Courtney Grunewald strongly contested with her 57.71 finish for third.

“I won’t lie, during the last half length of the pool, I thought I saw my competitor out of the corner of my eye,” Kukielka said. “I thought, ‘oh my gosh, I can not let her get me,’ so I just threw my head down, and all I kept thinking about was ‘wall, wall, wall, wall.’”

Kukielka said knowing at the beginning of the season that both Grunewald and Klunk were coming onto the MIAC scene pushed her to keep her crown.

“The motivation to try to retain my title … was kind of driving me, so it really was all about the preparation, not about the race itself,” Kukielka said.

Punyko’s second place in the 100 breaststroke (1:04.55) gave her an NCAA B qualifying time and contributed to the women’s 449 accumulated points at the end of Friday night’s events, while the men had collected 477 team points. The Gustavus women and St. Olaf men continued to lead the team races, both by about 100 points.

Saturday marked Hodgson’s final day coaching against conference competition in his career, and both the men’s and women’s swimmers seemed to be on a quest to impress, as he said they had been all weekend.

“It wasn’t like we had places where we slipped up,” Hodgson said. “We just had one of those meets where everybody swam almost 100 percent, and that’s rare.”

Henrickson, Schneeman, Lanz and Mike Solfelt combined for a 3:03.82 second-place finish in the 400 yard free relay, while Grunewald dropped .67 seconds off her prelim swim for second in the 200 fly (2:08.92) and Punyko rallied for second in the 200 breaststroke (2:21.34).

Hodgson said it hasn’t hit him yet that this is his last year with the team, and predicted he will still be in “coach mode” until after the national meet.

“(The national qualifying swimmers) deserve my full attention,” he said. “I don’t want to be thinking that I’m done or anything. After nationals, I’ll be done coaching.”

Briggs LeSavage can be reached at lesa4364@stthomas.edu.