C-N men's swim team wins 10 of 11 events, both men and women teams earn first-place finishes
MILLIGAN, Tenn. - Both Carson-Newman men's and women's swim teams collected first-place finishes on Saturday evening in a Quad meet which featured Mars Hill, Milligan and Warren Wilson.
MILLIGAN, Tenn. - Both Carson-Newman men's and women's swim teams collected first-place finishes on Saturday evening in a Quad meet which featured Mars Hill, Milligan and Warren Wilson.
The full 22-event meet marked the first competition for the Eagles since they competed in the Nova Invitational on the 13th & 14th of October.
Neither team in the Quad meet was ranked outside of the C-N team, although the Mars Hill men's team ranked outside the top-25 in the collegeswimming.com national poll where the Lions were voted 31st.
The C-N men's team collected a 493 points, with Mars Hill checking in at No. 2 with 436 points. Milligan and Warren Wilson rounded out the third and fourth positions respectively with 398 points for the Buffaloes, and 51 for the Owls.
The standings stood the same on the women's side with the Eagles earning 531 points and Mars Hill the runner-up at 440 points. Milligan was just edged by the Lions with 398 points, while Warren Wilson recorded 79.
The C-N women's side kicked off the afternoon with a first-place finish in the 200-meter medley relay. The squad of Ksenia Naydenova, Claudia Carroll, Courtlyn Fields and Mary Northcutt finished a full three seconds ahead of the next best time in its competition Milligan, with a time of 2:07.23.
Maggie Melhorn, Lisa Postma, CJ Jensen and Margaret Stansberry all collected wins in individual events. Melhorn, a senior out of Knoxville, Tennessee, recorded a time of 2:10.14 in the 200-meter freestyle, her lowest time in the event so far this year. Lexy Raybon was the second-place finisher in the event with a time of 2:14.42, topping her seed time by .08.
Postma, in the 50-meter freeestyle (27.08), and Stansberry, 100-meter freestyle (59.00), also topped season-best times in their respective events.
Jensen recorded a top-finish of 1:06.79 in the 100-meter butterfly, and came in third-place in the 100-yard backstroke (1:09.09) just narrowly being beat out by her teammate Naydenova at 1:09.06.
On the men's side, the Eagles collected the top-finish and the second-place finish in the 200-medley relay, and the 200-meter freestyle relay.
Junior Marcelo Figueiredo earned the top spot in both the 800-meter freestyle and the 400-meter freestyle.
Six other C-N swimmers collected first-place finishes in separate events. Chad Andolsjek, Jon Lancaster, Ivo Kunzle, Nikola Tadic, Seth Hughes and Caleb Howell all turned in top times.
Of the 11 events in which they competed in, only the 200-meter freestyle did not turn in a first-place finisher for the Eagles. However, Howell and Paden Duke checked in at second and third-place in the event.
In the updated rankings, C-N women's swim checks in at No. 5 in the collegeswimming.com poll, while the men hold the No. 15 spot.
Both men's and women's swim teams at also hold top-25 positions in the 2017 Preseason College Swimming Coaches Association of America/TYR NCAA Division II Swimming & Diving Poll, which was announced on Oct. 17. The next poll release is slated for Nov. 14.
The women's team checks in tied for No. 18 in the rankings with Colorado Mesa receiving 38 points, while the men hold the No. 24 spot with 18 points.
The next event for the Carson-Newman swim teams is the University of Tennessee Mid-Season Invitational, which is scheduled to take place in Knoxville from Nov. 30 to Dec. 2.
