By Kaylie Noll, Swimming World College Intern
Summit League swimmers dove in this morning in Indianapolis for prelims, fighting to make finals in the 500 yard freestyle, 200 yard individual relay, and 50 yard freestyle, and making NCAA B time standards in the process. The women’s one meter diving prelims is currently ongoing.
For the women, the 500 yard freestyle showed some impressive times throughout. As expected, the University of Denver placed seven out of the eight swimmers advancing to the A final this evening. The lone non-Denver swimmer is Hadlie Overhue from South Dakota State University, sitting in seventh with a time of 4:56.81. Denver’s Maddie Myers led the way with her time of 4:47.99, while teammates Morgan Mullenix and Clara Jenck placed themselves in the second and third spot, respectively. Mullenix touched the wall at 4:50.54 and Jenck cruised to a 4:50.99. The B final tonight will consist of swimmers from South Dakota State, South Dakota, Omaha and IUPUI.
On the men’s side, the top five seeds for tonight’s A final all represent Denver. Dylan Bunch leads the way, swimming to a NCAA B standard time of 4:23.47. Luke Williams finished with a time of 4:26.44, with Jared Smith right behind, rounding out the top three with his 4:26.61. IUPUI has two swimmers in for tonight, Benjamin Levart and David Sweezer, while Western Illinois University places its trust in Matthew Abercrombie.
The women’s preliminary 200 yard individual medley was loaded with NCAA B standard times from Denver’s top four women. Bailey Andison, Amanda Sanders, Morgan McCormick, and Johanna Roas all hit the cut with times of 1:58.23, 2:00.29, 2:00.42, and 2:00.85, respectively. Andison additionally broke the league championship record of 2:00.19 set by Roas the previous year.
The men’s 200 IM showed a similar story. Denver’s Tim Cottam was the only swimmer to touch with an exact NCAA B cut of 1:49.09. His teammates Ben Severino and Lane Bretschneider were also close, finishing with times of 1:49.45 and 1:49.71, respectively. Also not far from the time standard and tying for fourth place going into the A final tonight were Denver’s Kyle Ewoldt and IUPUI’s Jonathan Stoller, touching at 1:49.74. A notable swim this morning was Western Illinois’s Chance McQuigg, sneaking into the A final with a five second drop, grabbing the sixth place spot for tonight.
There was another NCAA B standard time put out by Denver’s Morgan Wice-Roslin in the women’s 50 yard freestyle. Wice-Roslin was the only woman under 23 seconds, swimming 22.98. Her teammates Lauren Moden (23.12) and Zoe Huddleston (23.19) placed themselves in a good position for finals. Another noteworthy time drop was shown by Kaylee Morris, dropping almost a whole second and stealing the sixth place spot for A finals. She is the only A finalist for Eastern Illinois University this evening.
In the men’s 50 free, Kyle Robrock from the University of Denver broke the ten-year old league championship record by 24 hundredths with a NCAA B time standard swim of 19.53. Also grabbing a B cut for the first time was second place seed Ben Bolinske from South Dakota State University, swimming 20.08. Barely rounding out the top three for tonight’s A final was Denver’s Anton Loncar, touching at 20.54, but only hundredths behind him are IUPUI’s Lennart Kuester and Jared Allen who will also be back with a vengeance in finals.
Finals will begin tonight at 6:00 pm Eastern time.
