WORCESTER, Mass. — Senior Anton Lopez (Oakland, Calif.) placed third in the 50-yard freestyle to lead the Wheaton College (Mass.) men's swimming & diving team on Day Two of the New England Women's & Men's Athletic Conference Swimming & Diving Championship hosted by Worcester Polytechnic Institute at the WPI Sports & Recreation Center in Worcester, Mass.
The Lyons tally of 232 points finds them in sixth place following the second day of competition, just behind host WPI's total of 235.5 points. Defending champion Massachusetts Institute of Technology owns the top spot with 498 points with United States Coast Guard Academy in second with 382 points.
Lopez registered a clip of 20.82 for his third-place showing in the 50-yard freestyle, ahead of junior Brian Hixson (Scituate, Mass.), who shaved .34 seconds off his personal best to place seventh in the race with a time of 20.97. Classmate Will Larson (Iowa City, Iowa) turned in a mark of 21.36 to finish 15th.
Wheaton opened the night in record fashion, breaking the school mark in the 200-yard freestyle relay for the second time on the day. The quartet set a new standard during the morning's preliminaries and broke the mark again in the finals with a time of 1:22.55 to best the former mark of 1:23.59 set at the 2018 NEWMAC Championship on February 23 by James Horne, Raymond Bortolot, Jonathan Dunnett and Jacob Cost. The Lyons' new record was established by Lopez in the race's first 50 yards, followed by junior Gavin Cullinan (Cumming, Ga.) and Larson, before Hixson swam the anchor to give Wheaton a third-place finish in the event.
The Lyons closed the night by finishing fourth in the 400-yard medley relay with a time of 3:24.33. Cullinan opened the race with the backstroke, before Hixson swam the breaststroke. Senior Sean Hill (Ellsworth, Maine) swam the butterfly leg, before Lopez closed with the freestyle anchor.
Hill also made history during the day for Wheaton, breaking Cullinan's program mark in the 500-yard freestyle during the morning prelims with a time of 4:37.42 to supplant the former time of 4:37.60. Hill turned in a finals time of 4:39.97 to place ninth for the Lyons, while sophomore Kevin Rice (Vienna, Va.) recorded a personal-record mark of 4:40.95 to finish 11th in the race.
Junior Andrew Tran (Milton, Mass.) also scored points for Wheaton with a 16th-place showing in the 200-yard individual medley after clocking in at 1:56.57.
Wheaton returns tomorrow for Day Three's 10:00 a.m. prelims in Worcester, Mass.
