Virginia Women Three-Peat at ACC Champs

The Virginia Caveliers women led the 2010 ACC Championships wire-to-wire on their way to their third straight conference title, and perhaps the most dominating one yet.

Virginia won every single relay on the day, and if this wasn’t dominating enough, in the 5 relay events they broke all 5 Conference Championship records, and 3 all-time Conference records. The only other two teams who won swimming events were Virginia Tech, who finished fifth, and North Carolina, who finished second.

Virginia Freshman Lauren Perdue was the obvious choice for the ACC Freshman and Swimmer of the Year Awards.  Perdue won the vaunted short-freestyle triple, in taking the 50 freestyle in 22.39, 200 freestyle in an NCAA automatic qualifying time of 1:43.98 (after setting a conference record of 1:43.86 in the prelims), and the 100 freestyle in a pool record of 48.65. Perdue also anchored 3 of Virginia’s record setting relays, (the 800 free, the 400 free, and the 400 medley) and swam the fastest split on a fourth (21.75). In other words, Perdue simply dominated the competition, and did just about everything a swimmer can do at a Conference Championship meet.

Virginia also got a bright performance from senior Mei Christensen, who swam two NCAA A-cut times to win both backstroke events. Additionally, Christensen set pool records in both events, although she came up short of her own championship and conference records.

Laura Moriarty was without a doubt the team-MVP for the runner-up North Carolina Tarheels. She won 3 events, and set two conference records. In the 400 I.M, she set the conference, championship, and pool records by going a 4:07.66. In the 200 breaststroke, she tied with Christine Olson at 2:09.94, which gave both women a share of the ACC and Conference Championship records. In the 100 breaststroke, she swam a 1:00.93, which alas did not give her any records.

Erika Hajnal of Virginia Tech won the two distance freestyle events, and placed third in the 400 I.M. In the 500, the first individual event of the meet, she swam a 4:40.03, which should easily qualify her for next month’s NCAA Championships. Hajnal also swam another solid B-cut in the 1650, with a time of 16:01.99.

Abby Johnston, a sophomore at Duke, won both springboard diving events in record settin performances. Her mark of 358.25 on the 1-meter was an ACC Championship record, and her score of 439.70 on the 3-meter set both an ACC Championship and ACC conference record.

The meet, hosted by North Carolina at the Koury Natatorium, was one of the fastest ACC meets on record. There were a huge number of pool, conference, and meet records broken, and nine A-qualifying times were achieved.

The Final Standings