2019 A3 PERFORMANCE INVITATIONAL
- November 20-24, 2019
- Grand Junction, CO
- COMPLETE RESULTS
Courtesy: Colorado Mesa Athletics
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University Swimming & Diving teams completed their domination of the A3 Performance Invitational in record-setting fashion on Saturday night here in the El Pomar Natatorium.
The Mavericks combined to set four new meet, two school and a pool record during the day. They also set 27 more NCAA qualifying marks.
CMU’s men won all 22 events of the meet, including seven on Saturday, and scored 1604 ½ team points to win by 631 as they took their fourth straight and ninth total title in the 10-year history of the meet.
Meanwhile, CMU’s women won each of the five relays throughout the meet and claimed four more event wins. With incredible depth behind that top-level success, the Maverick women also scored 1,465 team points, a new meet scoring record. The point total also more than doubled Dixie State, which surged into second place on the final day with 710. The 755-point final margin of victory also equaled last year’s meet record.
The Colorado School of Mines, which finish second on the 5-team men’s side with 973 ½ points ended up third amongst the seven women’s teams with 697 points.
Mines senior Mia Wood was named as the Female Swimmer of the Meet after winning all four of her distance freestyle events (200, 500, 1,000, 1,650) to earn high-point honors. Wood won a dozen A3 Performance Invitational titles in her career.
CMU sophomore Jackson Wuthrich, who had won events on the first three days of the meet, finished as the Male high point scorer and Swimmer of the Meet with 73 points but may have been overshadowed on Saturday by some stellar record-setting performances by his teammates Mahmoud Elgayar, Pedro Terres Illescas and Jolynn Harris.
The records started going down in the early afternoon as sophomore diver Jolynn Harris tallied 277 points on six dives off the 1-meter board to win the exhibition event while setting another NCAA qualifying score. That mark also broke CMU’s school-record of 275.25 points, which had been set by teammate Brittany Dixon at last year’s meet during the 11-dive competition. Harris also broke the exhibition event record of 270.80 points, which had been set last year by CMU’s Ali Lange.
Dixon finished second with 263.35 points on Saturday. Lange was third with 235.80 this time around.
The records continued to be set in the evening finals session as Wood won the 1,650 freestyle in 16:59.77 to take down a 5-year old meet record of 17:07.75, which had been held by Wyoming’s Aliyah Mikulski. Wood’s freshman teammate Meghan Slowey (17:37.60) and CMU sophomore Robyn Naze (17:37.96) also went under the NCAA “B” qualifying standard to take second and third in a tight battle.
CMU then had two of the four NCAA provisional qualifiers in the men’s 1650 free as Torsten Rau claimed the win in 15:56.06 ahead of third-place teammate Logan Ellis (16:08.55).
Western Colorado’s Savannah Tice then took the women’s 200 back in 2:01.07 despite being seeded just sixth coming into the finals. CMU underclassmen Lauren White (2:01.32), Davy Brown (2:03.10) and Jordyn Beem (2:03.88) also set “B” cut qualifying times as the Mavs went 2-3-4-5-7 in the event. White (2:00.91) and Sarah Fillerup (2:03.15) also had even better provisional qualifying times during the preliminary heats, when the Mavs had each of the top four qualifiers with “B” cut times.
Maverick sophomore Lane Austin then won the men’s 200 back in 1:49.48 to complete a 100/200 sweep on the weekend. Nico Tscherner was second for the Mavs in 1:51.45. Austin had posted an even quicker time of 1:48.75 in the morning session joining Torsten Rau (1:48.55) and Alex Bruce (1:50.13) as provisional qualifiers to the national championships.
The Maverick women then claimed their first swimming win of the night in the 100 free as junior Maddie Pressler out-touched Dixie State’s Kelsea Wright for a tight win. Pressler touched in 51.75 seconds while Wright joined her as a “B” cut setter in 51.86. The Mavericks had five of the eight finalists in that event.
The Maverick men were just as dominant as they swept the top three places while putting six in the top eight overall in the 100 free. Noah Vallee led the way in 46.02 seconds while Jordan Smith (46.10) and George Durin (46.33), who had been the top qualifier out of the morning heats at 45.68, completed the 1-2-3- sweep.
Dixie State would get a win in the 200 breaststroke from Hannah Hansen, who finished in a “B” cut time of 2:19.99. The Mavericks had six of the eight finalists, led by third place Olivia De Remer (2:24.74).
The men’s 200 breast would be one of the biggest highlights of the night as Elgayar, just a sophomore, set new meet and school-records while finishing in a time of 1:59.27, easily under the NCAA “B” cut time of 2:02.07. Elgayar’s mark was well under the former meet record of 1:59.71, set in 2014 by Cal Baptist’s Nikolay Klepikov. It also substantially lowered the Maverick altitude-adjusted standard of 2:00.44, set in 2017 by Ryan Gifford.
The Mavericks then continued the momentum into the 200 butterfly as Bella Walters won the women’s event in a NCAA provisional qualifying time of 2:06.23 to lead the Mavs to three of the top five places. Walters had swum an even quicker 2:06.15 in the morning. The Mavs’ Candice Rosen took third in the final at 2:07.82 while Naze finished fourth in 2:11.50.
In the men’s final, Terres Illescas smashed the pool and meet records as he won in 1:46.54. Already the school-record holder at 1:44.28, Terres Illescas went well under Joshua Hanson’s (Cal Baptist)’s former pool record of 1:48.93, and obliterated his own meet record time of 1:49.35, set last year as a junior. On Saturday, CMU’s Tucker Adams (1:50.11) and Jake Simmons (1:50.84), also set NCAA “B” cut times in the final.
The Maverick women’s quartet of Lauren White, Pressler, Noel Scott and Natalie Saul then won the 400 free relay in 3:28.00. White’s opening-leg split of 52.16 seconds was good for a provisional qualifying NCAA time.
Austin, Elgayar, Smith and Vallee finished the men’s relay in 3:00.01 to smash last year’s meet record time of 3:02.17. The quartet was also just a single one-hundreth off the NCAA qualifying standard of 3:00.00. However, Austin’s opening-leg split of 45.55 seconds was good for a NCAA provisional qualifying time.
Junior diver Noah Luna also claimed an exhibition win on the 1-meter with 275.00 points for the Mavericks.
A handful of Maverick swimmers will compete again on Sunday morning as the pool will be converted to a long-course set-up for a set of time trials. Those events, which will be contested in meters, are geared for American athletes hoping to set the U.S. Olympic Time Trial standards and for foreign athletes for their various national and international aspirations.
That session will begin at 10 a.m. and will wrap up the 2019 portion of the season for the Mavericks.
