NORTON, Mass. – Senior diver Morgen Coughlin-Doyle (Topsham, Maine) shattered the school record on the three-meter board and tallied 18 points to help lead the Wheaton College (Mass.) women's swimming & diving team over visiting Wellesley College, 181-109, this evening at Balfour Natatorium on the Wheaton campus in Norton, Mass.
The Lyons improve to 2-0 on the season, while the Blue fall to 0-1 in their season opener.
Wheaton won 12 of 16 events for the meet, including two events that saw the Lyons take the top three spots. The home team also won both relay events.
Coughlin-Doyle topped the former Wheaton standard of 289.45, formerly set by Maddy Morrison on January 18, 2017, with a tally of 309.20 points. Coughlin-Doyle won the event, followed by Wellesley junior Elsa Marsden (Vienna, Va.) with a score of 214.75. Coughlin-Doyle also posted the winning mark on the one-meter board with a score of 271.87 with Marsden scoring 213.75 points.
Senior Reese Hartmann (Grand Rapids, Mich.) matched Coughlin-Doyle with 18 points, including a pair of first-place finishes for the Lyons. She touched first in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 2:02.86, before taking the top time in the 200-yard backstroke with a 2:11.93 clip.
Senior Cecilia Cai (Palo Alto, Calif.) and junior Lara Dashti (Kuwait City, Kuwait) combined to lead the Blue with a meet-high 22 points each. Cai placed first in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:13.75 and the 200-yard individual medley with a mark of 2:13.75 in addition to a second-place showing in the 100-yard freestyle. Dashti swept the breaststroke events, winning the 100-yard race with a time of 1:07.30, while finishing first in the 200-yard event with a mark of 2:26.51. She also added a runner-up finish in the 50-yard freestyle.
Sophomore Kaleigh Morton (Milford, Conn.) racked up 15 points for Wheaton. She sprinted to a win in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 26.73 and added third-place efforts in both the 200-yard freestyle and the 200-yard backstroke.
Junior Garin Stone (Barrington, R.I.) and classmate Vivian Van Holland (Excelsior, Minn.) each scored 13 points for the home team. Stone captured first in the 100-yard backstroke after clocking in at 1:01.30 in addition to a second-place showing in the 100-yard butterfly. Van Holland swam to first place in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 5:31.10 and showed her range with a second-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle.
Senior Katie Walz (Bellevue, Wash.) swam to victory in the 100-yard freestyle on a time of 55.11 and placed third in the 100-yard butterfly for the Lyons, while senior Alexa DiCenso (Methuen, Mass.) won the 100-yard butterfly with a clip of 1:00.17 and added a third-place effort in the 100-yard breaststroke. Junior Talia Dalton (Andover, Minn.) won the 1000-yard freestyle by nearly 15 seconds with a time of 11:02.99 and later placed fourth in the 200-yard backstroke to give her 11 points for the night.
First year Lily Fender (Burnsville, N.C.) collected three second-place finishes for Wellesley to give her 12 points after finishing as the runner-up in both the 100 and 200-yard backstroke events and the 200-yard IM. Junior Emily Richardson (Bedford, N.H.) posted a pair of second-place efforts for the Blue in the 500 and 1000-yard freestyle events to bolster the Blue's distance efforts.
Wheaton opened the meet with a win in the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 1:49.89. Hartmann opened the race with the lead backstroke, followed by junior Emma Claire Lambert-Shemo (Cleveland, Ohio) in the breaststroke. DiCenso swam the butterfly leg, before Walz closed the final 50 yards with the freestyle.
The Lyons closed the night with a win in the 200-yard freestyle relay behind Walz, Lambert-Shemo, Stone and Hartmann for a combined time of 1:41.24.
Wheaton returns to the pool on Friday, November 1 when it hosts Bridgewater State University at 6:00 p.m., while Wellesley heads to North Andover, Mass. to take on host Merrimack College and Simmons University in a double-dual meet on November 8 at 6:30 p.m.
