Feb. 23, 2011
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Contact: Dan Carr
CLEVELAND, Ohio - The Cleveland State women's swimming and diving team ended the first day of the 2011 Horizon League Swimming and Diving Championships with a bang, breaking two conference relay records and one Horizon League individual record on Wednesday (Feb. 23).
"[Today] was fantastic, absolutely fantastic," head coach Wally Morton said. "When you have two relay teams and a swimmer break conference records, that's a spectacular start to a meet."
The foursome of Alice Sommerville, Carys Behn, Alex Johansson and Gretchen Hestley bookended the night's action by breaking records in the 200 freestyle and 200 medley relays. The group won the 200 free in 1:31.63, breaking the old Horizon League mark of 1:32.59, set by Green Bay in 2009. The Vikings also broke that Phoenix team's record time of 1:42.40 in the 200 medley, taking first in 1:41.77.
In addition, Sommerville's lead-off 50 split in the 200 free (23.06) set a new conference 50 freestyle record, besting Lindsay Caldwell's (Milwaukee, 2005) old mark of 23.14.
The three times were also CSU records and Busbey Natatorium records.
"Our dryland program has been really difficult and demanding," Morton said. "The types of workouts we've been doing all benefited our swimmers tonight."
The women's 3-Meter Diving was also held on Wednesday. Kacey Cummings led the Vikings with a third place finish, scoring 279.85 in the finals. In what proved to be a very close competition, she lost by five points to Youngstown State's Casey Hill, who won with a score of 284.20, just edging out runner-up Kelsey George from Milwaukee (284.05).
Kathleen Chandler also turned in a strong diving performance, winning the consolation round of the finals with a score of 222.35.
"Those records kind of set the tone for the meet," Morton said. "After that, we just battled. Two of our swimmers in the 1,000 scored, obviously our relays were fast and we came back with a great third place showing by Kacey Cummings in the 3-Meter diving."
The only other event of the day was the 1,000 free. Two Vikings scored points in the competition. Ashley Rossi had CSU's best finish, taking 12th in 10:38.31. Amanda Pallija also scored, finishing 15th with a time of 10:42.63.
"What I liked about our team was that it was a team effort," Morton said. "Everybody, whether they were swimming in their events tonight or not, were on the deck cheering everybody on. There was incredible school spirit and incredible support for each other."
The Vikings are in third place with 116 points after the first day of the conference championships. They trail Green Bay, who leads with 155 points, and Milwaukee, who is in second place with 134 points.
"It's a great start to our meet, but most of our competition is still ahead of us," Morton said.
The 2011 Horizon League Championships will resume Thursday (Feb. 24) morning with the swimming preliminaries starting at 10:00 a.m.
