FGCU Women Earn First-Ever NCAA Relay Bid on Night 1 of 2015 CCSA Championships

2015 CCSA Championships

• Wednesday, February 18- Saturday, February 21
• Athens, GA – Gabrielsen Natatorium
• Prelims/Finals Wednesday 5 PM (diving)/6 PM, Thursday-Saturday 10 AM/6 PM (Eastern Time Zone)
• Championship Central (Link to live results on this page once meet starts)

Women’s Session

FGCU started the women’s meet off with a bang by qualifying the school’s first ever relay for NCAAs.  The team of Kira Toussaint (24.21), Katie Armitage (27.54), Emma Svensson (23.04), and Becky Derogatis (22.38) swam a 1:37.17. This swim was well under the A cut and meet record set by Liberty University last year. The explosive split by Svennsson was .84 seconds faster than anyone else in the field. Liberty swam a 1:39.73 to claim the second place spot.

Ending the night the same way that they started it, FGCU captured their second relay win in the 800 free relay (7:16.90). Last year they saw this relay get DQ’ed , so they are already off to a great start as they look to take back the CCSA Championship crown. As expected FGCU has jumped out to the early lead, but University of Incarnate Word is only 18 points behind after they had 3 divers place in the top four during the 3M finals.

Men’s Session

UMBC barely missed their meet record to start the night off in the 800 free relay.  University of Incarnate Word had a small lead at the halfway point after junior Connor Hennessy swam the fastest time of the night (1:37.01). The race was still fairly close after the third leg, but freshman Jonas Gutzat helped to close the door for UMBC as they overtook Incarnate Word by over two seconds.

Gardner-Webb came out with the win in the final relay of the night after a strong finish by junior Nathan Lile (19.41). UMBC was in the lead going into the freestyle leg, but Lile was able to bring home the win for his team. Incarnate Word initially finished close behind in third, but this relay ended up getting DQ’ed.  Strong relay swims by UMBC on night one has them on top of the leaderboard. Incarnate Word will need to rebound quickly if they have any chance of repeating as champions.

Team Scores

Women

1. FGCU- 205
2. University of Incarnate Word- 187
3. Georgia Southern University- 146
4. Liberty University- 112
5. Gardner-Web University- 106
6. Campbell University- 96

Men

1. UMBC- 74
2. Gardner-Web University-72
3. New Jersey Institute of Tech- 60
4. Virginia Military Institute- 56
5. University of Incarnate Word- 34
6. Howard University- 32