2018 CSCAA National Invitational
- March 8th-10th, 2018
- Lejeune Hall, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland
- SCY (25y) course
- Psych Sheet
- Meet Central (for schedule, full qualifying procedure)
- Live results
Meet Records were set in 5 events at the 2018 CSCAA National Invitational Championship – an alternate championship primarily designed for Division I swimmers who don’t qualify for the NCAA Championships.
The men from George Washington University and the women from Rice sprinted out to leads in the team scoring, ironically without capturing any of those 5 records broken.
Denver won the most events on the day, starting with a 1:20.57 in the men’s 200 free relay, and finishing with 3 more wins. Among them was a sweep of the 500 freestyles. Annelyse Tellier won the women’s race in 4:44.01 in finals to break Alicia Caldwell’s prelims record of 4:48.32. The record coming into the meet was held by Caldwell’s former Rice teammate Erin Flanigan, who swam 4:48.59 in 2015. In total, the top 4 finishers were faster than the old record in finals.
The men’s race went to Denver sophomore Colin Gilbert, a Canadian by birth, in 4:19.86. Gilbert swam at the NCAA Championships last year, but missed the meet by a few spots this season.
The Pioneers’ last win of the day came in the women’s 400 medley, where they raced to the final touch against Florida International. Denver won in 3:3.65, while FIU took 2nd in 3:39.86. The teams fought back-and-forth throughout the meet, with FIU taking the edge after a 1:01.4 breaststroke split from Carita Luukkanen before Denver’s back-half of Kylie Cronin (52.96 – fly) and Aysia Leckie (49.28 free) overcame a 7-tenths of a second deficit for the win.
Both relays overcame a backstroke deficit early, with San Jose State’s Colleen Humel opening up her team’s relay in 53.34 for an early lead. They eventually took 4th, unable to match Denver or FIU on the breaststroke leg.
Other Day 1 Winners:
- The Florida International women kicked off the meet with a new Meet Record in the 200 free reelay, swimming 1:31.41. Letizia Bertelli led-off in 22.61 and Alex Mayhew anchored in 22.44. The Panthers rolled through the Conference USA Championship meet 3 weeks ago, including this relay; they’re swimming here without NCAA qualifier Naomi Ruele, but Bertelli was 3-tenths of a second faster than she was at the conference championship meet to help close that gap.
- Rice’s Kaitlyn Swinney won the women’s 200 IM in 1:59.86. That’s her first time under 2 minutes in that event. She and teammate Jaecey Parham (1:59.87) went 1-2 in the event, though Parham had almost a full-second lead over Swinney going into the last 50.
- Army’s Peter Mikheyev won the men’s 200 IM in a new Meet Record of 1:45.48. He also broke the Meet Record in prelims with a 1:46.14, which in turn broke the old record set by Incarnate Word’s Daniel Torres at 1:47.00.
- New Hampshire’s Liza Baykova won the women’s 50 free in 22.60. That breaks both her own school record of 22.91 from prelims, as well as the America East Conference record.
- The meet’s first win from a “Power 5” conference team came in the men’s 50 free, where Allen Ross swam a 20.36 He just edged-out La Salle runner-up Marcus Forsgren in a very tight final that saw the top 8 finish within 4-tenths of a second. The difference in prelims between ‘top seed’ and ‘out of the points all together” was less than half-a-second.
