A little competition never hurt anyone. The Missouri swimming and diving team would agree, as teammates were pitted against each other for the Black and Gold intersquad meet on Friday.

Divided into two separate squads of black and gold, each swimmer participated in every event the meet had to offer.

Standout performers included freshman swimmer Neil O’Halloran, who placed first in the 100-yard freestyle and 50-yard butterfly, and Shara Stafford, who swept first place in the 100-yard freestyle, 50-yard butterfly and 50-yard backstroke events.

“You just have to be confident,” Stafford said. “To know that you’ve put in the work to get to this point and that you’re going to make it show in the pool.”

Other top finishers included Roko Simunic, first in the 50-yard backstroke and Jack Brown, first in 50-yard breastroke. Emy DiBenigno who also placed first in the 50-yard breastroke.

Coach Greg Rhodenbaugh said he was pleased with the meet’s results.

“Those were some of the best times we’ve ever had, and it’s this early on in the season,” he said. “The fact that everyone, most everybody could come back pretty shortly after their race before, because everybody swam every event, shows me that they are in pretty good shape. They can repeat five times in a row in an hour, swimming really fast.”

The meet was a chance to both evaluate the whole team before the season as well as determine which swimmers would earn the team’s relay spots. Rhodenbaugh said it’s the competition instilled by meets like these that push the team forward.

“I think everybody saw who’s competing for relays,” he said. “Competing for relays is what we want them to do because it makes everybody better. So we saw a lot of really good, healthy inter-team competition.”

Rhodenbaugh said the amount of competition he witnessed can only point to good things to come.

“There’s a lot of really good competition going on out there,” he said. “Most everybody was really on it and a lot of them surprised themselves. I think they are in a really good spot right now; I think we’re pretty ready.”

But the meet wasn’t all positive, as Rhodenbaugh said Friday’s mock meet also pointed out plenty of areas to improve upon before the Show-Me Showdown Invite on Saturday.

“We’ve done a lot of work on fitness and overall getting ready to start the season off,” he said. “What we need to do now is pay more attention to the technical things like starts, turns and breakouts. We’re a little rusty on that stuff, but a meet like a pentathlon has a way of crystallizing that so we can really work on that now.”

Rhodenbaugh’s swimmers reiterated this idea.

“It’s the little things that count,” Stafford said. “If we can do them now, then we know we will be able to do them in a meet.”