Diving and relay wins highlight opening day of SCIAC Championships for CMS
LA MIRADA, Calif. – The first day of the SCIAC Swimming & Diving Championships are in the books and both Claremont-Mudd-Scripps teams find themselves in an unfamiliar position. For the first time in several years at the conference championships, both the Stags and Athenas trail after the first day of events. The Stags sit in second place (136), 13 points behind leader Pomona-Pitzer (149), while the Athenas (80) are 38 points behind first-place Pomona-Pitzer (118) on the women's side. A total of five events were accounted for in the scoring on the first day, Feb. 18, at Splash! La Mirada Regional Aquatics Center.
Sophomore Patrick Quarberg (CMC) in 3-meter diving, landed the Stags their first individual conference championship of the 2016 SCIAC Championships. He earned 22 points for the Stags with a first-place, NCAA qualifying score of 499.60, 10-plus points ahead of runner-up Scott MacKay (488.15) from La Verne.
The Athenas brought home a conference championship in the 800 free relay. CMS' 'A' relay team entered the event as the top seed and they did not disappoint on Thursday, taking first place with a time of 7:39.03, several seconds ahead of Pomona-Pitzer (7:43.48). Not only did the Athenas win the event, the team of freshman Emma Stacy (SCR), sophomore Lauren Rosenberger (CMC), sophomore Lizzie Carrade (CMC) and freshman Riley Hoffman (CMC) achieved an NCAA B-cut standard and had the third-fastest time in Athena program history.
The evening session began with the men's 200-yard medley relay and in an extremely competitive race, Pomona-Pitzer (1:31.46) touched the wall just ahead of the Stags' 'A' relay team (1:31.70). Nevertheless, CMS made the podium in second place, achieved an NCAA B-cut standard and swam the fourth-fastest time in CMS history, over a second faster than CMS' best time of the season in the event which it swam in the Pomona-Pitzer meet.
In another relay, the 800 free, the Stags swam their way to a third place podium finish with an NCAA qualifying time of 6:47.32, also a CMS top-10 time.
Day Two preliminaries start at 9 a.m. and finals begin at 4 p.m. with the women's 1-meter diving event.
Results
By Chris Watts
Director of Athletics Communication
Claremont McKenna College
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