The CMS men's 200 medley relay was national runner-up (photo by Aaron Gray)
The CMS men's 200 medley relay was national runner-up (photo by Aaron Gray)

Medley Relay Earns Runner-Up Finish at NCAA Championships for CMS Men's Swimming and Diving

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. - The 200-yard medley relay team of Anderson Breazeale, Walter Limm, Marco Conati and Nick Tekieli came in second place on the first day of the NCAA Division III Championships on Wednesday afternoon at the IUPUI Natatorium in Indianapolis.

The Stags also had two winners in consolation heats in school record times, as Lucas Lang finished in 4:25.67 to surpass his own school record, while Tekieli became the first Stag in program history to break 20 seconds in the 50 free, winning the consolation heat in 19.98 seconds. 

The relay team captured first-team All-America honors with their second place finish, touching the wall in 1:27.38. It was just three-tenths of a second behind Emory's winning time and over a second better than their SCIAC-winning time (1:28.57) from last momth, which set a new program record at the time. 

Tekieli finished 12th in the prelims of the 50-yard freestyle in 20.22 seconds, which was just one-hundredth of a second off the CMS record, set by Alex Poltash in 2015. In the consolation final, though, he uncorked a 19.98 to make Stags history as the first sub-20 second swimmer, which would have also been the fifth-best time in the finals, as only four swimmers in that heat came in under 20 seconds as well.

Lang was 11th in the preliminaries with a 4:29.14, but came back in the evening to surpass his own school record by over a second with a 4:25.67 to earn nine points for a ninth-place finish. Cyrus Gaylord added a 13th place finish in the three-meter dive to provide four more points to the CMS total. 

The strong showing from the relay team (34 points) has the Stags in seventh place after the first day with 56 points overall. Emory leads with 101, followed by Denison with 95, Williams with 72 and Johns Hopkins with 71. Traditional power Kenyon was disqualified in the relay and is in fifth place with 65.5 points. 

CMS will be back in action tomorrow on the second day of the NCAA Division III Championships, with the 200-yard freestyle relay, the 100-yard butterfly, the 200-yard freestyle, and the 400-yard medley relay.