Thursday was the first full day of competition at the men's and women's swimming North Coast Athletic Conference championships. After one full day, DePauw women were the fourth ranked team and the men were ranked third out of all of the teams. On the men's side, Denison is in a strong lead with Kenyon close on their heels outranking DePauw. On the women's side, Kenyon is on top, followed by Denison; while Wittenberg only holds position over the Tigers by four points with two days of competition still to go.
The women's team can boast more than just a fourth place seat going into today and Saturday. Thursday saw the women posting two records during the competition. The 200-yard freestyle relay made up of freshman Caroline Bridges, senior Courtney Lehmann, freshman Erin Horne, and senior Nicole Rosillo put them into the DePauw record books with a time of 1:35.86 in the preliminaries on Thursday morning. The women also landed a third place spot with their time. The relay also made the NCAA "B" cut time in the finals. Then there was sophomore Emily Weber who touched the wall in 5:03.03 to break the school's 500-yard freestyle record of 5:03.25 -- the record that she had set in preliminaries earlier that morning. Weber finished in seventh place in the event. The women's 400-yard medley relay had a disappointing disqualification in the event finals.
The men's team worked hard to go into the rest of the competition in third place, while also grabbing four NCAA "B" cut times. The men's 200-yard freestyle team also achieved a national "B" cut time and third place with their time of 1:22.92. Sophomore Casey Hooker took third place in the 500 free followed by freshman Alex Grissom in fifth place. Both men made the national "B" cut time of 4:47.33. Blake Lehmann was another freshman boasting an impressive performance at his first conference championships. Lehmann took fifth place in the 50-yard freestyle. The men's 400-yard relay claimed the fourth of the "B" cuts taken by the men's team Thursday. The team of sophomore Alex Alfonso, junior Luke Hessburg, junior Matt Gleason and Lehmann touched the wall at 3:22.99 for a third place conference finish.
Friday and Saturday hold the events of many more talented DePauw athletes. With the third and fourth place standings of the respective teams, the sky is really the limit these next two days.