2024 UNLV FINIS Invitational
- December 16-18, 2024
- Buchanan Natatorium, Las Vegas, Nevada
- Short Course Yards (25 yards)
- Day 1 Results
The 2024 UNLV Invitational kicked off Monday in the desert, and while this is a secondary mid-season invite for most of the participating teams, the opening session still saw some fast times.
That included a season-best-matching 200 free relay from NCAA D2 school Colorado Mesa to open the men’s racing.
Men’s Day 1 Highlights
Colorado Mesa’s men won the 200 free relay in 1:19.09, beating out the D1 teams in attendance including UNLV’s runner-up quartet that finished in 1:19.40.
The CMU relay of Harry Stacey (19.69), Jameson McEnaney (19.80), Richard Schmiedefeld (19.75), and Andrew Scoggin (19.85) combined to match the time that the same relay, in a different order, finished in at their home invite in November at altitude. That switch of order might have been a keen one by the CMU coaching staff – Stacey split 19.69 on Monday and 19.51 three weeks ago on a rolling start, while McEnaney went from a 20.28 leadoff to a 19.80 rolling start – a net-positive on the front half in spite of the team being back into training.
The Mavericks remain ranked 4th in D2 swimming this year.
UNLV’s runner-up relay featured a 19.24 anchor split from Daniel Nicusan, while Cal Baptist’s 3rd-place relay featured the best split of the day with a 19.20 from Remi Fabiani.
Fabiani went on to win the 50 free individually in 1965, just out-touching Colorado Mesa’s Stacey (19.67) and UNLV’s Nicusan (19.70). Fabiani won the 2022 and 2023 WAC titles in this event before sitting out last year to prepare for the Olympic Games.
Cal Baptist had the best men’s sprinter and distance swimmer on the day. Hungarian junior Mark Kovacsics won the 500 free in 4:22.33. That’s his season-best time by about half-a-second en route to a WAC title defense in this event.
University of the Pacific’s Mitchell Hopper won a thriller of a 200 IM final in 1:47.49. After a lagging breaststroke split, Hopper pulled away from UNLV’s Ian Belflower (2:48.42) and past UNLV’s Cooper Kiel (1:47.79) to take the win with a 25.53 freestyle split. Nobody else in the A-Final finished in faster than 26.0.
The UNLV men closed the day with their lone win of the day, winning the 400 medley relay in 3:09.73. That win was thanks in large part to a big effort from the two short-axis legs, with Nicusan splitting 52.08 on breaststroke and Belflower splitting 46.70 on fly.
- Cal Baptist’s Mario Del Valle won 1-meter diving in a zone qualifying score of 355.40. He was an NCAA qualifier last season.
Women’s Day 1 Highlights
The UCLA women dominated the day on the women’s side, opening and closing the session with relay wins.
In the opening 200 free relay, the Bruins finished in 1:30.18, which was 1.2 seconds ahead of the runners-up from UNLV. That included the two fastest splits of the field on the back-half of the relay: a 22.13 from Emma Harvey and a 22.28 from Sarah Bennetts.
UNLV had a fast back-half as well, with Avery Webb splitting 22.47 and Bridget Sullivan splitting 22.44. UNLV’s time of 1:31.39 undercut their season-best of 1:32.15 from the Minnesota Invite two weeks ago and moved them to 53rd place in D1 this season.
UCLA then finished the session with a 1-2-3 result in the 400 medley relay, with the “A” group touching in 3:34.44. The next-best finishing relay, Colorado Mesa, was disqualified, leaving almost a four second gap between UCLA’s third relay (3:38.53) and Wyoming’s best relay (3:42.34), which placed 4th.
That Bruin dominance carried over, mostly, into the individual events as well. Ashley Kolessar won the 500 free in 4:49.29: about two seconds off what she went at the Ohio State Invitational in November; and UCLA finished 1st-2nd-3rd-4th in the 200 IM, led by Rosie Murphy in 1:57.46. That’s faster than the 1:58.14 she swam at the Ohio State Invite – an encouraging sign given that she has done well at peaking at the season’s-end in past years.
It wasn’t a full UCLA sweep on the day, though: Sofia Maksimova, a 23-year-old Cal Baptist senior from Russia, won the 50 free for Cal Baptist in 22.46. A former Rutgers swimmer, she is the defending WAC Champion in this event and was 19th at NCAAs last year.
The Bruins took the four spots behind that.
- UCLA’s Maya Salvatti won the women’s 3-meter diving event with a score of 305.60; her teammate Eden Cheng was 2nd in 292.85.
Team Standings After Day 1
Men:
- UNLV – 294
- Colorado Mesa – 280
- Cal Poly – 194
- Cal Baptist – 177
- Wyoming – 121
- Pacific – 141
- Linfield University – 8
Women:
- UCLA – 345
- UNLV – 294
- Wyoming – 215
- Colorado Mesa – 112
- Cal Baptist – 110
- Pacific – 65
- Cal Poly – 44
- Linfield – 4
