Eagles swim circles around competition at King Invitational
The Carson-Newman swim team eviscerated the competition in both days of the King Invitational, winning all but four out of 36 total events.
KINGSPORT, TN – The Carson-Newman swim team eviscerated the competition in both days of the King Invitational, winning all but four out of 36 total events.
"It's great to start the season with a dominant win," Taylor said. "We need to enjoy it, learn from the weekend and build through the season."
The Eagles swept day one of the event, which was considered one session, and saw first-place finishes in in 22 out of 26 events on day two, which contained sessions two and three.
C-N won every single relay the invitational had to offer.
"The relays were big highlights of the meet, overall they were executed really well with some stand out swims," Carson-Newman coach Jordan Taylor said. "It's great that we have so many athletes competing for relay spots so our B relays were also very important this weekend and often they were beating A teams from other teams."
Carson-Newman saw victories in all individual events on day one as well.
Linda Ungerboeck (Vienna, Austria) and Mathew George (Manchester, England) won the 500-yard freestyle. Meredith Ginn (Ocala, FL) and Caleb Howell (Easley, S.C.) took home first in the 200-yard IM. Mary Northcutt (Huntsville, Ala.) and Chad Andoljsek (Slovenia) placed first in the 50-yard freestyle.
In a demonstrative display of excellence, the Eagles repeated those exact same results in day two.
Taylor's group then went on to win the 400-yard IMs, 100-yard breaststrokes, 100-yard butterfly swims, 200-yard freestyles, 100-yard backstrokes, the women's 1650 freestyle, the men's 200-yard backstroke, the women's 100-yard freestyle, the men's 200-yard breaststroke, and both 200-yard butterfly events.
"We won 32 out of 36 events this weekend, we went into it very confident and prepared to win a high number of races," Taylor said. "It shows our team depth that we can win so many over a full weekend from sprints to distance. It was a great all-around team performance."
The only events the Eagles didn't win over the weekend were the women's 200-yard breaststroke, the men's 100-yard freestyle, the women's 200-yard backstroke and the men's 1650-yard freestyle.
Carson-Newman won the invitational by over 1250 points. The Eagles finished with a combined score of all three sessions of 2,254 while the next closest competitor was Catawba College at 960.5.
Other opponents included Bluegrass Mountain Conference rivals King, Mars Hill and Lees-McRae.
C-N will next face nationally-ranked Wingate in a dual-meet in North Carolina on Oct. 19th. The Bulldogs are ranked 17th nationally on the men's side and 11th overall on the women's end.
"As we move ahead towards the Wingate meet in a few weeks we have to brush up on a few technical things and increase our race intensity to an even higher level," Taylor said.
Be sure to keep up with C-N swim all season long on Carson-Newman's social media platforms and on cneagles.com