Five Break Qualifying Times as Diver Sets School Record at Kenyon
Posted: Dec 06, 2013

Five Break Qualifying Times as Diver Sets School Record at Kenyon

(GAMBIER, Ohio) - The Carnegie Mellon University women's swimming and diving team continued action at the Total Performance Invitational hosted by Kenyon College on Friday, December 6. Each swimmer that reached the finals set a season-best time with five swimmers reaching NCAA "B" qualifying standards as freshman diver Machika Kaku (Irvine, Calif./University) won the 1-meter diving event, breaking her own school record with 457.80 points.

Senior Megan Garvey (West Chester, Pa./Villa Maria Academy) finished seventh in the 200-yard butterfly recording an NCAA "B" qualifying time and career-best time of 2:05.83. Freshman Deniesse Vankat (San Diego, Calif./Westview) also recorded an NCAA qualifying time with a fifth-place finish in "B" final and a time of 2:08.02.

Senior Soleil Phan (Irvine, Calif./Beckman) picked up a second-place finish in the "B" final of the 200-yard freestyle with an NCAA qualifying time of 1:53.21 while sophomore Kira Singhaus (Cherry Hill, N.J./Cherry Hill West) swam to a qualifying time of 57.38 in the 100-yard backstroke finals, finishing seventh overall. The time was also her career best.

Sophomore Elissa Maercklein (Whitefish Bay, Wis./Whitefish Bay) and freshman Marisa Giglio (Cranbury, N.J./Princeton) set season-best times in the 100-yard backstroke with times of 59.03 and 1:00.00, respectively. The same is true for sophomore Corrine Bacigal (Campbell Hall, N.Y./Washingtonville) with a time of 1:00.48 and freshman Amanda Kuhn (Bethesda, Md./Walt Whitman) and sophomore Paige Sieffert (Ann Arbor, Mich./Saline) with times of 1:00.25 and 1:01.11.

In the 100-yard breaststroke, freshman  Natalie Kronfli (Potomac, Md./Stone Ridge) reached the "B" final with a season-best time of 1:07.23 in the preliminaries. She finished fifth in the finals with a time of 1:07.53. Freshman Julia Atwood (Mechanicsburg, Pa./Mechanicsburg) also reached the finals with a season-best time of 1:10.52 during the preliminaries.

Phan set her second NCAA qualifying time for the day in the 400-yard IM. Her preliminary round time of 4:31.57 put her in the finals where she finished seventh with a time of 4:31.62. In the "C" final, junior Kelley Sheehan (Poway, Calif./Poway) finished second and provisionally qualified for the NCAA Championships with a season-best time of 4:36.34. Junior Nicole Crimi (Eureka, Mo./Visitation Academy) knocked nine seconds off her season best with a third-place finish in the "C" final in a career-best 4:37.91.

The 200-yard freestyle relay of Maercklein, freshman Allison Kirkby (West Chester, Pa./Conestoga), Kuhn and freshman Gillian Crews (Fairfax, Va./Oakton) set a season-best time of 1:38.18, finishing 10th, to start the evening while the 400-yard medley relay team of Singhaus, Kronfli, Crews and Phan finished seventh in a season-best time of 3:53.89.

Competition concludes on Saturday with preliminaries at 9:30 a.m. and finals at 5:30 p.m. The Tartans are currently fifth in the standings and ahead of Grove City College and DePauw University.