WORCESTER, Mass. — The Wheaton College (Mass.) women's swimming & diving team placed second in the 400-yard freestyle relay to secure a third-place finish at the New England Women's & Men's Athletic Conference Championship hosted by Worcester Polytechnic Institute at the WPI Sports & Recreation Center in Worcester, Mass.
The Lyons tallied 677 points to finish behind second-place United States Coast Guard Academy's total of 750 points. Massachusetts Institute of Technology won its 14th straight NEWMAC title with 1678 points.
Wheaton finished the meet in a flurry, turning in a time of 3:29.22 to place second in the 400-yard freestyle relay behind senior Katie Walz (Bellevue, Wash.), followed by classmate Reese Hartmann (Grand Rapids, Mich.) and junior Emma Claire Lambert-Shemo (Cleveland, Ohio). Junior Garin Stone (Barrington, R.I.) closed out the meet with the final 100 yards for the Lyons.
Wheaton scored big points in the opening 1650-yard freestyle event behind a pair of outstanding performances. Junior Talia Dalton (Andover, Minn.) cut 8.19 seconds off her previous best to post a time of 17:25.88 to place second, while classmate Vivian Van Holland (Excelsior, Minn.) bested her previous record-time by a whopping 9.61 seconds to finish sixth in the race with a time of 18:05.35.
Hartmann almost equaled her record-setting effort from the morning preliminaries in the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 2:02.62 to finish third in the event for the Lyons. She broke her own school mark with a time of 2:02.54 by 1.3 tenths of a second. Sophomore Kaleigh Morton (Milford, Conn.) finished 13th with a personal-best mark of 2:10.37.
Senior diver Morgen Coughlin-Doyle (Topsham, Maine) finished just shy of her own school standard on the three-meter diving board with 478.85 points to place third for Wheaton.
Stone registered a personal-record time of 51.89 for a fifth-place effort in the 100-yard freestyle, before Walz touched the wall at 53.56 to finish 10th. The Lyons piled up points in the 200-yard breaststroke led by Lambert-Shemo's time of 2:27.42 to place sixth in the event. Senior Caris Mann (Hanover, Mass.) turned in a time of 2:29.55 to finish ninth and sophomore Kelsey Callaghan (Vestal, N.Y.) placed 14th with a personal-record mark of 2:34.67.
Wheaton senior Alexa DiCenso (Methuen, Mass.) shattered her personal-best time to finish ninth in the 200-yard butterfly with a clip of 2:10.09, while sophomore Grace Chin (Blooming Grove, N.Y.) finished 20th with a time of 2:19.56.
The Lyons tallied 22 top-10 finishes during the four-day meet, including a medal in 12 different events. Wheaton was outstanding in all five relays placing second in the 800-yard and 400-yard freestyle races and the 400-yard and 200-yard medley relays to go with a third-place showing in the 200-yard freestyle relay.
Stone scored huge points in the freestyle events for the Lyons, placing second in both the 500 and 200-yard races to go with a fifth-place effort in the 100. Hartmann took bronze in both the 100 and 200-yard backstroke events, while Coughlin-Doyle was third on the three-meter board and eighth on the one-meter board. Dalton also medaled for Wheaton during the meet, placing second in the 1650-yard freestyle to go with a seventh-place finish in the 500.
