Emory Men and Women Win 19th Consecutive UAA Conference Championship Titles

• Championship Central and results

The Emory men’s swimming & diving team captured its 19th consecutive UAA Championship title over the weekend, beating fellow Division III powerhouse Washington University of St. Louis by 134 points.

Emory’s victory was led by senior and NCAA standout Andrew Wilson, who red-shirted the 2015-2016 season to focus on training for the Olympic team with Eddie Reese and Longhorn Aquatics.  Now back at Emory, Wilson has dominated his competition in Division III at every showing.  Though he did not go lifetime or even season best times at the UAA Championships, Wilson still won all three of his races by wide margins and rewrote the UAA record books in the process.

To kick things off, Wilson won the 200 IM with a 1:46.69, splitting an impressive 29.09 on the breaststroke leg.  No one could touch Wilson in the 100 breast, which he won in 52.70 seconds, a full 1.5 seconds ahead of freshman Reon Yamaguchi from the University of Chicago.  Yamaguchi’s time is still lightning fast, and given his young age, perhaps he will challenge Wilson’s Division III records before he graduates.  Wilson finished his individual events with a 1:54.11 to win the 200 breast, making him the only swimmer to break 2:00 in the 200 breast.  Wilson also helped Emory capture titles in the 200 and 400 medley relays, both of which set new UAA records. Finally, Wilson helped Emory to a 2nd-place finish in the 400 free relay, splitting a solid 45.59 to show some versatility.

Fittingly, Wilson was named the UAA Men’s Swimmer of the Year for the second time in his career.  Wilson’s teammate Sage Ono was named UAA Men’s Rookie of the Year, the first Emory swimmer to win the honor since Wilson himself won it. Ono set a new UAA record in the 100 back with a blistering 48.08, winning the event by nearly 1.5 seconds.  Ono also placed 4th in the 200 back in a 1:49.74, and contributed the Emory’s 200 and 400 medley relays.

Last year’s NCAA Division III champion in the 50 free Ollie Smith set a new UAA record in the 50 with a 20.04 and was narrowly denied the title in the 100, which instead went to NYU’s Chad Moody by one one-hundredth of a second.

The Emory women were also victorious in their campaign for another UAA title, winning by a nearly 500-point margin. En route to their victory, the Emory women won all 5 relays, setting new UAA records in all of them.  The Emory women also won all but three events contested, only missing the 1 and 3 meter dives and the 100 fly, which was won by Freshman Kathy Lin of NYU in 55.17. Though Lin’s time was very good, it was just behind Megan Campbell’s prelims time of 54.99 which lowered the pool record by three-quarters-of-a-second.  While Campbell was knocked out of the top-3 in the 100 fly, she came in a very narrow 2nd in the 200 fly, just getting out-touched by freshman teammate Maria Turcan, who won 2:04.14 to Lin’s 2:04.17.  Sophomore Hannah Eastin of the University of Chicago came in a very narrow 3rd as well, touching in 2:04.19.

In similar to fashion to the honors won by Wilson and Ono, Emory junior Cindy Cheng was named the UAA Women’s Swimmer of the Year for the second consecutive year after earning individual titles in the 500 free (4:52.20), 100 back (55.07 – UAA Record) and 200 back (1:58.46 – UAA Record) and was part of four relay (200/400 medley, 400/800 free), each of which set a new UAA record. Freshman Maria Turcan was selected as the UAA Women’s Rookie of the Year after winning the 200 fly (2:04.14) and placing 2nd in the 500 free (4:56.47) and 7th in the 400 IM (4:31.9).