2022 CCSA Men’s & Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships
- Wednesday, February 16- Saturday, February 19, 2022
- Liberty Natatorium- Lynchburg, VA
- Defending Champion: Liberty and FGCU (1x)
- Short Course Yards (25 yards), prelims/finals
- 9 Lane Finals
- Live Results
- Live Video
- Estimated Timeline
- Pre-Scratch Psych Sheets
- Championships Central
The Liberty women held tight on the final day of competition at the 2022 CCSA Championships to win their fourth-straight CCSA title, beating Florida Gulf Coast. Those two teams tied for last year’s title.
On the men’s side, Incarnate Word also held on to its lead in the last day to win their fourth title in five years: redemption after missing last year’s championships due to a severe winter storm in Texas.
This will be Incarnate Word’s last CCSA title, for now, as they move to the WAC next season.
Women’s Recap
Final Team Scores:
- Liberty – 1,830.5
- FGCU – 1,586
- UNC Asheville – 1,387.50
- Incarnate Word – 1,024
- Campbell – 937
- Georgia Southern – 814.5
- Gardner-Webb – 624.5
- North Florida – 572.5
- Bellarine – 416.5
Conference Awards:
- Co-Most Outstanding Swimmer of the Championships: Tori Czarnecka, FGCU & Petra Halmai, FGCU
- Co-Most Outstanding Diver of the Championships: Reese Wakefield, FGCU & Maddie Freece, Liberty
- Most Outstanding Freshman Performer: Sydney Stricklin, Liberty
- Swimming Coach of the Meet: Jake Shellenberger, Liberty
- Diving Coach of the Meet: Andrew Helmich, Liberty
After racking up a huge lead on day 3 of the CCSA Championships, the Liberty Flames stretched that out by another 50 points on Saturday to lock up the title. Their 302.5 point margin of victory is the biggest in the league since FGCU won by 312 in 2015.
Liberty and FGCU each won a pair of individual events on the final day of competition, but the session opened with a break from tradition: UNC Asheville freshman Caitlin Hefner dominated the 1650 free. She swam 16:47.40 to win the race by 23 seconds ahead of Incarnate Word’s defending champion Ximena Conde.
That is one of only two events of the meet that weren’t won by Liberty or FGCU, and is Asheville’s first-ever CCSA Event Champion. The other winner from outside the top two was Georgia Southern sophomore Amy Hornyak, who won the 200 IM on day 1 of the meet.
Her swim capped off a historic regular-season for the Bulldogs that saw them finish the year undefeated in dual meets, including multiple wins over teams that they have never beaten before. That title from Hefner gives them a touchstone moment to springboard and overlap into next season, and as a freshman she will be a big part of the program for the foreseeable future.
This was a good year for Asheville to have a good year: with conference realignments pending, and Liberty scheduled to leave for Conference USA no-later-than the 2023-2024 season, they become the foil for FGCU into the future.
After that moment settled, Liberty climbed back to the top of the podium in the next two races. Freshman Sydney Stricklin won the 100 free in 49.48 to secure Most Outstanding Freshman Performer honors. She beat-out the defending champion Tori Czarnecka, who finished 2nd in 49.65.
Stricklin’s previous best time of 49.64 was done in high school, and she hadn’t yet been better than 51.7 in college competition prior to this meet.
With that runner-up finish, Czarnecka left the door open to share Most Outstanding Swimmer honors with her teammate Petra Halmai. All Halmai needed to do was to lock up a fourth-straight conference title in the 200 breast, and she did so handily, by two seconds, winning in 2:10.47.
Halmai has qualified for the last two NCAA Championship meets, but will need to find a couple of seconds in this 200 breast at a Last Chance meet to make another.
That win meant Halmai and Czarnecka each had two individual wins and one runner-up finish, tying them with 101 points each.
While FGCU had the brightest stars of the meet, Liberty continued to find scoring from different corners of their roster, especially newcomers.
Sophomore transfer Abbie Shaw, who swam at Kentucky last season, won the 200 backstroke in 1:55.13.
Shaw was a very good 100 backstroke coming out of high school, but this 200 time is a huge jump for her: her best time coming into the meet was 2:00.35 from 2018.
Shaw previously won the 100 back at this meet.
The FGCU women finished off the meet by winning the 400 free relay in 3:20.25. The team of Kaja Reinhardt (51.02), Czarnecka (49.38), Pike (50.16), and Hailey Jerew (49.69). That’s a fourth relay win in dive events for the Eagles, with only Liberty’s win in the 800 free relay on Friday interrupting the perfect run.
Asheville finished 2nd in 3:22.05, using a balanced relay, even without any sub-50 second splits, to fight off Liberty, who were .05 seconds behind.
After Czarnecka, Liberty’s Stricklin had the next-best split of the field in 49.59, followed by Jerew in 49.69. Jerew anchored all four winning FGCU relays.
Men’s Recap
Courtesy: UIW Athletics
Final Team Scores:
- Incarnate Word – 1,046
- FAU – 903.5
- Gardner-Webb – 725
- Old Dominion – 519.5
- Bellarmine – 403
Conference Awards:
- Most Outstanding Swimmer of the Championships: Rateb Hussein, FAU
- Most Outstanding Diver of the Championships: Kaivon Dixon, UIW
- Most Outstanding Freshman Performer: Timo Paisley, FAU
- Swimming Coach of the Meet: Philip Davis, Incarnate Word
- Diving Coach of the Meet: Tomy Law, Incarnate Word
Of the five events on Saturday, two of the wins involved the Most Outstanding Swimmer of the Meet Award winner Rateb Hussein of Florida Atlantic.
His first victory came in the 100 free where he swam 43.78. While that was three-tenths of a second short of the school record, it is the first time FAU has ever won that race at the CCSA Championships
Note: while the live results show that as a championship record, it is not. That record still belongs to Nathan Lile of Gardner-Webb in 43.05 from 2016.
He then finished the session anchoring the Owls’ 400 free relay with a 43.46 split. He combined with Alec Peckmann (44.67), Peter Tanner (44.17), and Logan Thornsberry (44.16) to finish in 2:56.46.
That shaved .11 seconds off the old CCSA Championship and Conference Record that was set at the 2014 championships by UMBC. That is the first conference record that was broken at this meet.
Alec Peckmann gave FAU another victory by winning the 200 breaststroke in 1:59.97. Peckmann took a gamble by jumping from the 100 free last season to the 200 breast this season as his final day event, and that gamble paid off: he knocked more than 4 seconds off his best time in this 200 breast to take the win. Peckmann, who started his college career at Penn State, won the 200 IM earlier this week, and finishes his senior season with three career CCSA titles.
Those three victories in five events kept Incarnate Word from growing their lead by much on the final day of competition, but the Cardinals used their depth to hold on tight and win by over 100 points.
That included victories from Fernando Ruvalcaba in the 200 back in 1:44.90 and Sergio Duran Mata in the 1650 free in 15:27.65.
While neither swimmer was the defending champion after missing last year’s meet, both have won titles before. For Ruvalcaba, that was a second win in the last three championships, and for Duran Mata, that was a second win in four seasons after previously winning in 2019.
