Courtesy: CMU Athletics
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.— After impressive efforts at the TYR/CMU Invitational swimming meet and the Lumberjack Diving Invitational over the weekend, the Colorado Mesa University swimming and diving teams have once again swept the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Swimmer & Diver of the Week awards, announced on Tuesday.
The awards sweep is the third in as many opportunities for the Mavs this season.
Agata Naskret and Harry Stacey swept the swimming awards while Ryan Campbell and Kenya Meyer took the diving honors. Stacey, a freshman, has now received RMAC Men’s Swimmer of the Week honor in back-to-back opportunities (Nov. 6) this season while Naskret, a Maverick junior and 5-time NCAA Division II Champion, as also received her second straight Women’s Swimmer of the Week honors this week and fourth in her 2-year CMU career.
Campbell, a junior college transfer from Monroe (N.Y.) Community College and a native of Delmar, New York, and Meyer, a junior from Bozeman, Montana claimed their first RMAC Diver of the Week honors of this season. She also had picked up the Nov. 23 honor in 2023.
Campbell, already assured of NCAA Division II Pre-Championship Meet qualification, set two more NCAA qualifying marks at the Lumberjack Diving Invitational in Flagstaff, Arizona. He won the 1-meter competition on Thursday with a total score of 554.65 points after recording 294.75 points in the final round of six dives.
Campbell also took third in Thursday’s 3-meter event with a total score of 585.25 points after scoring 299.10 points in the final round. He also helped the Mavs’ “A” team win the team event on Friday.
His wins were the first of his Maverick career after winning the NJCAA 3-meter title last year at Monroe (N.Y.) Community College.
Meanwhile, Meyer booked her trip to the NCAA Division II Pre-Championship Qualification meet for a third straight year as she scored 258.95 points in the final round of the 1-meter competition on Saturday at the Lumberjack Diving Invitational in Flagstaff, Arizona. That score surpassed the necessary qualifying score of 255 points at a second meet.
Competing against teammates and NCAA Division I Divers, she finished 12th in the original field of 34 divers from seven teams with her total score of 510.15 points, which came from a combination of the preliminary and final rounds, both of which were contested in 6-dive formats.
Meyer also reached the finals in Thursday’s 3-meter competition with a total score of 483.95 points, good for 13th place in a field of 35 divers.
Naskret, the 2023-24 RMAC Swimmer of the Year, set five pool and meet records and smashed the NCAA Division II all-time record in the 100-yard backstroke swimming to a time of 51.96 seconds (51.86-altitude adjusted) at the TYR/CMU Invitational, well under the former national record of 52.07. She also set the fastest time in the country this year in the 200 Back (1:56.31-converted) and ranks third in the country in the 50 Free (22.75) after winning all three of those individual events in pool and meet record times. She also broke her own 50 Free and 100 Back school records.
In the relays, Naskret also swam the opening legs on the Mavs’ national-leading 200 Free (1:31.62), 400 Free (3:21.42-converted), 200 Medley (1:39.38) and 400 Medley (3:39.57-converted) teams and helped the Mavs break the school, pool and meet record in the 200 Medley Relay and the pool and meet record in the 200 Free Relay.
She won six events throughout the meet and turned in NCAA Championship qualifying marks in all seven of her events.
Stacey set meet records in six events, pool records in five and school records in five while leading the Mavericks to their eighth straight TYR/CMU Invitational team victory by a wide margin of 549 1/2 points over Division I Wyoming and by 952 points over third place Colorado School of Mines. The freshman and 2024 Paris Olympian also smashed the CMU records in the 50 and 100 Free individual events and in the 200 Free and 200 Medley Relays and helped the Mavs book a trip to the NCAA championships in all five relays while setting NCAA qualifying marks in three individual events as well.
He set an NCAA Championship automatic qualifying time of 42.95 (altitude-adjusted; 43.05 actual) seconds in the 100 Free, good for a school, meet and pool record and leads the Division II performance list with that time, which is 0.46 seconds better than 2024 RMAC Freshman of the Year Jameson McEnaney’s former school record.
In the 50 free, he posted a meet record time of 19.49 seconds, an incredible four tenths below the former school record of 3-time RMAC Swimmer of the Year and 6-time National Champion Ben Sampson, while breaking the oldest El Pomar Natatorium Record on the books (19.55 in 2013). He ranks second on the national performance list in that event.
In the relays, Stacey helped the Mavs set a national leading time of 1:24.66 in the 200 Medley Relay and the nation’s second ranked time in the other four relays: 1:19.09 (200 Free), 2:55.27 (altitude-adjusted 400 Free), 6:27.71(converted) (800 Free), 3:10.53 (converted) (400 Medley). The Mavs set pool records in the 200 Free, 200 Medley and 400 Medley Relays and meet records in each of those plus the 400 Free Relay.
The 200 Free and 200 Medley relay marks are also new school records, the latter of which was a massive 1.53 seconds better than the former Maverick standard.
If that were not enough, Stacey also moved into the No. 3 spot of CMU history in the 100 Fly, with a NCAA qualifying time of 47.67* seconds in a time trial. He also had a school-record 50 Fly split of 21.81 seconds in the first half of that race.