All-America performances keep Stags in fifth at NCAA Championships
SHENANDOAH, Texas – After the second day of the NCAA Division III Championships, the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men's swimming & diving team sits in fifth place with 128 points. Just 17 points separate fifth place CMS and third place Emory. Kenyon leads the overall field with a comfortable lead with two days of competition remaining.
In the championship final of the 200-yard freestyle relay, junior Alex Poltash, sophomore Matthew Williams, senior Patrick Shultz and junior Joseph Hinton came up with an All-America swim with a sixth place finish as the finished in 1:21.16. The time bested the previous CMS and conference record of 1:21.23, set by the quartet in the 2014 NCAA prelims.
Later in the evening, Williams became an honorable mention All-American with a 13th place overall finish in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 49.30, slightly slower than his prelim time of 48.93. In the championship finals, the NCAA D-III record was broken by the first place finisher from Washington University, St. Louis.
Shultz also swam in the 100 butterfly with a preliminary time of 49.32 for 24th overall. Senior Marc Blumberg finished in 49.97 for 35th to round out the CMS participants in the 100 butterfly.
Then in the 200-yard freestyle, senior Cameron Whiting finished in 11th overall with a consolation finals time of 1:39.15, one-one hundredth of a second slower than his prelim time which set a new CMS record. Poltash (1:40.05) finished in 25th for the Stags as well.
Senior diver James Stevick made his 2015 NCAA Championships debut on Thursday in the 1-meter boards, and he dove his way to a sixth place finish, which makes him an All-American in the event. He posted a score of 475.85 in the event.
The second day came to a close for the Stags as Williams, junior Zach Alleva, Shultz and Poltash became All-Americans in an extremely fast 400-yard medley relay championship final which saw the NCAA Division III record get bested by the top-3 finishing teams (Williams, Emory and Kenyon) Thursday. CMS tied with Denison for sixth in the event with a time of 3:16.74, another CMS and SCIAC record. The previous CMS record was set in 2014 while the SCIAC record has stood since 2012.
The Stags are back in action on March 20 with preliminaries set for 10 a.m. and session 2 at 6 p.m., CST.
Results
Team Scores
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