By Delaney Lanker, Swimming World College Intern
The Great Lakes Valley Conference Championships began this morning at the Crawfordsville Aquatics Center. The GLVC is made up of nine men’s and women’s teams. Eight of the teams have both men’s and women’s swimming and they are Bellarmine, Drury, Indianapolis, Lewis, Maryville, Missouri-St. Louis, Truman State, and William Jewell. Missouri S&T only has a men’s team and this is Quincy’s first year as a team and has a women’s only squad.
Last year at the 2015 GLVC Championships, both Drury’s men’s and women’s teams won the meet, they will be looking to defend their title this year. This morning the 200 IM and 50 freestyle were swum.
Prelims Day One
To start off the meet in the women’s 200 IM Truman State University’s Evyn Spencer went a 2:04.14 to be seeded first going into tonight’s finals. Behind her was William Jewell’s Paige Meredith with the time of 2:06.03 and Drury’s Gretchen Stein in a 2:06.15.
The men’s 200 IM was led by Rodrigo Cordo Berti (1:49.70) of the University of Indianapolis, on his toes was S&T of Missouri’s sophomore Eirik Nielsen in a time of 1:49.93. Romano Hofmann of UNIDY came in third (1:51.14).
Wen Xu of Drury went a 23.11 to finish first. Truman State both second and third place this morning,with Nikki Sisson going a 23.55 and Alison Strickler going a 24.00 for third.
Missouri University of S&T’s Keith Sponsler won the men’s 50 freestyle in a time of 20.23. Rodrigo Caceres (20.33) came in second and Daniel Rzadkowski (20.35) came in third, both from Drury.
The men’s and women’s 1000 freestyle is a finals only event. Every heat besides the final heat was swum this morning. The fastest seeded heat will swim in finals tonight.
Full prelims results can be found here
