February 6, 2019

Five events bring All-BMC honors for the Eagles at day one of the league Championships

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Following day one of the Bluegrass Conference Mountain Championships, Carson-Newman Swimming turned in five All-BMC swims on the evening at the Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Following day one of the Bluegrass Conference Mountain Championships, Carson-Newman Swimming turned in five All-BMC swims on the evening at the Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center.

The first event of the league championships began with the women's 200-yard medley relay as C-N's foursome of Ksenia Naydenova, Gabby Aguiar, Elly Culp, and Lisa Postma turned in an all-conference performance with a third-place finish at a time of 1:44.95.

The time marks a new season-best in the event edging the previous time of 1:45.07 to gain 32 points for the team. Queens grabbed 40 with a first-place finish at 1:38.76, an NCAA qualifying swim, with Wingate in second getting 34 points with a time of 1:42.94. The Royals time is just short of a BMC and Division II record, marks the team still currently holds.

Coach Jordan Taylor's men also turned in an All-BMC swim in the 200 medley relay finishing runner up to Queens finishing at a time of 1:28.39. Seth Hughes, Roman Andrei, Ivo Kunzle, and Chad Andoljsek grabbed an NCAA provisional qualifier with the time which also marks a season best and a new program record. Hughes and Roman were a piece of the previous record set in the 2017 with a time of 1:28.81. The group is also ranked fifth in the nation in the event.

Despite finishing outside of the top-six needed to be an all-league swimmer, freshman Kailey Grant finished 10th in the 1000 yard freestyle as she turned in a new lifetime-best time by over 48 seconds clocking in at 10:35.16. The time is good enough for second in C-N Swim history.

Marcelo Figueiredo earned All-BMC honors in the same event grabbing fourth place and 15 points for the Eagles as he swam the 1000 free in 9:20.48. His previous best on the season sits at 9:18.97, a mark which was already good enough to be an NCAA D2 provisional qualification. The Porto Alegre, Brazil native owns the top-three times in program history in the event.

Casey Charles earns six points for the team in the 1000 freestyle with an 11th-place finish earning a new season-low effort at 9:36.11, nearly 31 seconds lower than his previous time.

The Eagles continued on through the evening with an All-BMC swim in the 800-yard freestyle relay as Aguiar, Iuliia Fomina, Regina Zipperer, and Postma earned the No. 3 position swimming at a time of 7:36.75 receiving 32 points. The mark is a new season-best for the group.

Queens and Wingate held the top-two spots in the event respectively.

C-N's men followed up with the overall program's fifth All-league swim in the first day of festivities as Jon Lancaster, Matthew George, Nikola Tadic, and Figueiredo earned third in the 800 free relay with an NCAA provisional qualifier and season-low time by seven seconds of 6:36.58. The mark also clips a new program record which previously stood at 6:36.82 and sits at fifth-best in all of Division II.

"Pleased with the way the meet started thats always good to get off to that start," Taylor said. We had a lot of good swims across the board. We only had about half the team racing tonight so we had about half our team pumped and ready to go for the tomorrow and I think we are in a good spot overall. With all our relays, it was a big focus to get us qualified to nationals. They knew that going into it and what the target times were. There were some crazy times tonight so again we feel good moving forward."

The team rankings put the women tied for eighth with 71 points and the men in fourth with 87.

Day two will pick up tomorrow morning with the preliminary swims. Stay tuned for more updates throughout the conference championships at cneagles.com.